The Periphery

Let's Start With a Link...

2011-06-07T16:45:00.002-05:00

This one is to a few reviews. Prof. Emily Toth at LSU writes a column under the name Ms. Mentor for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Every year she writes a review and survey of academic novels for summer reading. Because the list of nominees is huge, she enlists a consultant or two to help out.

The column is limited in space, so she can only excerpt the reviews we write. But I had fun writing my reviews, so I decided to post them.

They are here: http://peripheralreviews.blogspot.com/

The Chronicle of Higher Education piece is here.

Maybe it's time...

2011-05-29T23:07:00.003-05:00

... to take another look at this little outlet for rantification and general enlightenment. It has been two years or so. I must ponder the implications and whatnot. Not to mention that I have, by rights, lost all of my readers. But oh, yes, it may be time for me to return to this activity-- especially if I am able to address some of the concerns recent developments imply in the life of a blogger who is not especially careful about how he shoots off his mouth.

More thought is required...

"I love his work..."

2009-08-06T17:45:00.003-05:00

John Hughes has died. Another casualty in the list of losses 2009 has brought us. Most important for me was his relationship with my brother, to whom he was profoundly warm and generous from the instant he moved to Chicago to record music. (For more on this, see Josh's blog entry.)

I only knew Mr Hughes through Josh's stories, through his sons (two of the most effortlessly kind and honorable people I've ever met), and most importantly, through his movies.

There is going to be a lot of talk about his work as "addressing a generation" or touching the lives of teenagers in the 80s before moving on to more broad, cartoonish work in the 90s. So I won't go much into that here. I'm sure there's a kernel of truth to statements like that.

In the Hughes work I like the best, there's a constant bittersweet strain. And it's not the one that most critics notice: the longing, the awkwardness, the anxiety of being young, in love, and a little despairing: the pain one goes through before finally getting what one wants (the gorgeous senior, the stylish yet sensitive upper class guy, the whole day of sticking it to the high school authorities.) Critics who weren't paying attention derided the resolution of some of Hughes's work as "too sweet".

But they're missing the point: the sweetness in all of Hughes's movies is the source of the bitterness. Any moment of sweetness his characters find is fleeting, fragile, and even when they achieve it, we know as well as they do that their happiness can't last. The pain comes not from unrequited longing, but from knowing that even if you get what you want, it will only be for a time.

At its best, Hughes's work captured the sense of what it is to be young, knowing you won't always be, and knowing that there's a time limit on the beauty you find. His movies are about the immanence of loss as well as the delicious, over-matched glimmers of hope that we may, if only for a moment, receive what we long for.

To that end: three videos, from the Hughes works I liked best. But not in any sort of order. Enjoy.

The Psychedelic Furs: "Pretty in Pink"

Thompson Twins: "If You Were Here"

Simple Minds: "Don't You Forget About Me"

The Pretty in Pink Soundtrack is destined for the iPod heavy rotation for quite some time to come, I'd say...

Music For You

2009-07-13T18:31:00.004-05:00

Because, why not? Why not, after all?

Because any day is a good day to take in some Pylon-- especially their growling, raging dance song "Stop It".

Because dance music really used to sound like this. Really.

And because you have to love a band whose members decided to stop playing rather than tour with U2. Is such an anti-market stance possible today?

And also because, as much as I like the happy, twee giggly summertime funstuff music being produced today (really, I do! It's nice!), sometimes you just want to hear a young Athens art student snarling "No rock and roll--nononono!"

And because I owned this album twice. Once was on a cassette. I played it over and over again until a 98-degree New Orleans September day melted it in the tapedeck of my dad's Datsun 210 Hatchback.

So I got another one. It's vinyl. I still have it. When I play it I still get pale ghostly visceral reminders of how big and wild and anarchic and fun the world might be. My hair doesn't stand on end quite as it did when I was 16, but there's still a twitching, and a desire to stay out all night killing brain cells and ruining my hearing.

Some Views From the Summer

2009-07-08T14:56:00.008-05:00

Hey Kids!

Want to see what a real summer working as a kayak guide looks like?!

Get a load of this:

My ride/home/office/gear warehouse:

Not the most secure or comfortable, but I've had worse. And in some ways, it has been perfect.

My neighbor:

She was trying to have some breakfast on the north side of Orcas Island.

A sunset:

That's not me out there-- that time. But plenty of times, it is...

My Fourth of July:

Sunset

Fireworks.

Freakshow who parked me in at Roche Harbor.

I mean, really. Really?!?, Are you kidding me?!

I almost left a nasty note. I wrote one, but then I just kept it. The point of the nasty note is the writing of the nasty note. Actually leaving it would be much less satisfactory overall.

More photos at my flickr site here.

Class Evals

2009-07-05T15:27:00.003-05:00

I'm going to spare you the ones that mention how unspeakably brilliant, engaging, accessible and witty I am, because if you're reading this you know that already. I'm just going to include the one by the student who gave me lousy marks.

Here goes: "Too much reading. You have to read a book a week. A book a week."

I'm not going to discuss the type of so-called mind that can produce a statement such as the above.

Instead, I would like to inform my readers that this was for a class which met once a week for three hours. We did not, in fact, read a book a week every week (in fact, some books took two weeks, and some we only partially read). I didn't assign any book longer than 250 pages for the weekly assignments, and most were less than 200. We watched three movies. Three. (To adapt the student's form of expression...)

Evidently that was too much scholarly effort for this university student.

And yet, the university is going to take this sniveling imbecile student's comments seriously in regard to the quality of my teaching.

Never mind the extensive, careful lectures and discussions I assembled so that the little dear wouldn't be too addled by the mysteries of Text or dazzled by the endless reflection of the Sign as applied to Nature. Never mind the myriad ways I sought to cushion the intellectual blow.

I would sigh, but instead I think I might just bang my head into the desk a few times.

Or maybe I'll just prepare to meet this student again one day-- most likely in a position of some substantial authority.

It's my fault, after all. I passed the kid (with a D, I think)...

I saw three deer

2009-06-24T17:30:00.002-05:00

...at my campsite on San Juan today. Three blacktails: a doe and two fauns. The doe slinked out of the brush near where I was dripping coffee for breakfast. She looked at me with caution-- not as if she were afraid of me hurting her, but as if she didn't want to startle me, wake me up, disturb my breakfast.

I squatted and turned my head, making myself look small and unthreatening. She crept out of the brush, two spotted fawns scampering with excitement next to her.

It's the kind of thing I would have called my father to tell him about last summer-- and I almost tried to today. I had pulled his number up on my cell phone before my bleary, early-morning brain remembered.

It made me think of this poem by Donald Hall:

White Apples

when my father had been dead a week
I woke
with his voice in my ear
I sat up in bed
and held my breath
and stared at the pale closed door

white apples and the taste of stone

if he called again
I would put on my coat and galoshes

Tomorrow I leave on the first of six sea kayaking trips over the next couple of months. The trips are shorter this year, to my dismay, but should be fun all the same...

Richmond Minor Eustis, Nov. 24, 1945- May 30 2009

2009-06-01T17:27:00.004-05:00

This runs Tuesday and Wednesday in the Times-Pic. It was the most difficult thing I've had to write-- for many reasons.

I don't feel capable of writing much more about this right now. There is, of course, much more to say, but somehow it feels trivial to write about it in this medium. I may write more about my father's death later, but I doubt it will be here.

I am resigning myself to missing this man every day for the rest of my life.

Richmond Minor Eustis, a lawyer, died Saturday in his home in New Orleans after surviving cancer for nearly two years. He was 63.

The son of David Eustis and Molly Minor Eustis, Richmond Eustis was born in New Orleans and graduated from Isidore Newman School. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Virginia, where he was a member of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, and he earned a JD from Tulane University Law School.

An expert in corporate and admiralty litigation, Eustis began practice at Phelps, Dunbar, then joined Monroe & Lemann, where he became a partner. He later founded the firm Eustis, O’Keefe & Gleason, where he practiced until shortly before his death. He was a member of the Maritime Institute and the Louisiana Bar Association, and was admitted to federal practice before the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.

His survivors include his wife of 38 years, Catherine Baños Eustis; two daughters, Julie Eustis Vaicius of New Orleans and Molly Minor Eustis of New York City; two sons, Richmond Minor Eustis, Jr. of Baton Rouge and Joshua Leeds Eustis of Chicago, IL; his brother David Leeds Eustis of New Orleans; his sister, Kate Eustis of Birmingham, AL; son-in-law, Christian Vaicius; two grandchildren, Lucy and James Vaicius, and more than a score of adoring nieces and nephews. His family and friends were gathered around him as he died.

Eustis served on the board of the Children’s Bureau and the New Orleans Board of Trade, and was an advisor to family-owned White Plantation. He was a member of the Inns of Court, the Sons of the Revolution, the Louisiana Club, and the Boston Club.

In addition to his legal work and his board work, Eustis enjoyed working outside in his yard or around his Lafourche Parish house. Blessed with what he liked to call “a trivial mind,” he was fond of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, of punning humor, and of the dogs who flocked to him.

He also was one of a handful of people expert in the history, repair and maintenance of traditional Carnival flambeaux.

A funeral service will take place Friday at noon at Trinity Episcopal Church, 1329 Jackson Ave., in New Orleans—the church where as a boy Eustis served as acolyte. Burial will follow at Metairie Cemetery. Visitation will begin at 11 in the church.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to one of the following groups: the Trinity Episcopal Church Medical Mission, 1329 Jackson Ave. 70130, the Kellermann Foundation/Bwindi Community Health Center—Uganda, P.O. Box 1901 Penn Valley, CA 95946, or the Delta Chapter of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity at the University of Virginia, P.O. Box 400314, Charlottesville, VA 22904.

Chris Paul is Better Than You

2009-04-17T08:39:00.003-05:00

Don't feel bad-- he's better than everyone else too. I want to see the Hornets go far, far into the post season (saddled though they are with a thin bench and fragile key players). Sure, there's the whole "support-the-local-guys" thing. But mostly I just want the chance to see CP3 work this kind of magic for a few more months.

Want some proof?

I don't know how they just chose ten. Paul does something astounding every game-- even in the ones the Hornets lose.

The first playoff game is Sunday on TNT versus Denver. It starts at 9:30 (Central). I guess I'm going to be up late...

If You Want to See How Devils in Hell Write...

2009-04-16T21:16:00.004-05:00

... then you should read the memos released by Pres. Obama's Justice Department today. These are the memos, in which functionaries of the Bush Administration, using the dry grey tones of universal bureaucracy, justify such actions as waterboarding, slamming detainees into walls, 11-day sleep deprivation, placing people in hanging stress positions, enclosing them in coffins for days.

In short, they justify torture.

They justify torture.

On behalf of us-- of our security. In our name.

I feel sick.

For a while, I was willing to give Bush some slack for meaning well, despite the crudity of his techniques, despite my opposition to what he ordered and how he ordered it. I'm not willing to give him that grace anymore. I will never be able to see that smirking face again without feeling a little sick, without thinking that he authorized men in masks to torture people for my sake. For the sake of my protection. This is not what I wanted.

It's not the first time I had heard such things were going on. There were clues. Signs that something was going on. I dismissed the reports. There was no way that anyone who loves this country-- who was simply a decent human being-- could do such things. The reports were surely just of outliers-- the excesses of poorly trained people under enormous stress. There was no way such orders came from the top, I thought. Bush and his people were clumsy, misguided, but they weren't capable of authorizing torture.

I was wrong. The evidence is right there for the world to read.

What we did was evil.

And I'm more than a little annoyed at President Obama for saying he won't prosecute those responsible. Those people deserve public exposure and jail. We deserve to know the extent of the wrong done on our behalf. (I say this as an enthusiastic Obama supporter.)

A final note: who got the memos released? Not Congress. Not a vigilant reporter or a crusading media organization.

Who got the Justice Department to release those memos?

The much maligned ACLU.

It's not said very often so I will say it here: God bless those guys.

They are doing more to protect and promote out ideal than our current administration. Just reminded me it's time to write them their check for the year.

Tough Crowds

2009-03-02T21:39:00.002-06:00

... A banker explaining to a teacher why the government should bail out his bank, but it's socialism-- and bad for the country-- if it helps her with her mortgage.

... An environmentalist explaining the intrinsic value of wilderness to the "Mine Everywhere for America" lobby

... A hapless grad student (ahem) trying valiantly to lead a discussion on Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground with a class of 35 sophomores and juniors when the sun is shining on a crisp Louisiana February day.

Carnival

2009-02-23T09:58:00.002-06:00

So far: amazing, as always. More later-- including photos from the float Chaos night.

Tonight I'm doing what is probably my favorite part of the season-- toting flambeaux in Proteus.

Here's what it looked like last year...

Not Real Work...

2009-02-20T10:07:00.011-06:00

Friends and family and acquaintances ask me from time to time what it is I'm working on, and I find from time to time that I go on far too long discussing the very fine nuances of what I'm up to. It's a dissertation, after all. I can explain it short ("Nature and Text") or I can explain it long (Please see final dissertation copy, due on file at LSU in January 2010).

But I've found a way to do a pretty easy and fun shorthand: graphic word clouds of my writing. This program selects out the words I use most in the work I'm doing, and arranges them in little clusters, with the most frequently-used terms in the biggest type.

Here, for example, is what my prospectus looked like (it's changed since then. A lot. I'm not going to go into how):

Here's a draft chapter I did on Deep Ecology:

Here's a cloud for some work I'm doing on Thoreau:

Here's some work I'm doing on John Wesley Powell and Deleuze:

Last ones. An article I wrote on Kant and the commodification of the sublime in wilderness:

And an article I'm working on about Marx, Nietzsche and Badiou and their ethical (horrors!) response to Callicles's challenge in the Gorgias:

There. That should clear it all up.

Now: back to work generating more of this kind of thing.

Occasional Poetry For a Boy Falling Out of the Sky

2009-01-26T20:05:00.006-06:00

Musee des Beaux Arts
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W.H. Auden
1940

Just So We're Clear...

2009-01-20T09:42:00.004-06:00

...on the last eight years: some quotes from Harper's Index:

Number of news stories from 1998 to Election Day 2000 containing “George W. Bush” and “aura of inevitability”: 206
...
Minimum number of Bush appointees who have regulated industries they used to represent as lobbyists: 98
...
Date on which the GAO sued Dick Cheney to force the release of documents related to current U.S. energy policy: 2/22/02

Number of other officials the GAO has sued over access to federal records: 0

Months before September 11, 2001, that Cheney’s Energy Task Force investigated Iraq’s oil resources: 6

Hours after the 9/11 attacks that an Alaska congressman speculated they may have been committed by “eco-terrorists”: 9
...
Percentage of Americans in 2006 who believed that U.S. Muslims should have to carry special I.D.: 39

Chances an American in 2002 believed the government should regulate comedy routines that make light of terrorism: 2 in 5
...
Estimated total calories members of Congress burned giving Bush’s 2002 State of the Union standing ovations: 22,000

Percentage of the amendments in the Bill of Rights that are violated by the USA PATRIOT Act, according to the ACLU: 50

Minimum number of laws that Bush signing statements have exempted his administration from following: 1,069

Estimated number of U.S. intelligence reports on Iraq that were based on information from a single defector: 100

Number of times the defector had ever been interviewed by U.S. intelligence agents: 0
...
Portion of Baghdad residents in 2007 who had a family member or friend wounded or killed since 2003: 3/4

Percentage of U.S. veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have filed for disability with the VA: 35
...
Number of all U.S. war veterans who have been denied Veterans Administration health care since 2003: 452,677
...
Minimum number of times that Frederick Douglass was beaten in what is now Donald Rumsfeld’s vacation home: 25

Estimated number of juveniles whom the United States has detained as enemy combatants since 2002: 2,500

Minimum number of detainees who were tortured to death in U.S. custody: 8

Minimum number of extraordinary renditions that the United States has made since 2006: 200
...
Number of incidents of torture on prime-time network TV shows from 2002 to 2007: 897

Number on shows during the previous seven years: 110
...
Portion of all U.S. income gains during the Bush Administration that have gone to the top 1 percent of earners: 3/4
...
Percentage of EPA scientists who say they have experienced political interference with their work since 2002: 60
...
Number of total additions made to the U.S. endangered-species list under Bush: 61

Average number made yearly under Clinton: 65
...
Days after Hurricane Katrina hit that Cheney’s office ordered an electric company to restore power to two oil pipelines: 1

Days after the hurricane that the White House authorized sending federal troops into New Orleans: 4

Portion of the $3.3 billion in federal Hurricane Katrina relief spent by Mississippi that has benefited poor residents: 1/4
...

There's more. A lot more. It's here.

Is it noon, ET, yet?

Humanism Ends With a Whimper

2009-01-19T11:37:00.003-06:00

Yes, after 800 years of education as a process for the liberation of the soul, a new way of considering education has come to dominate: the training of students for standardized jobs. Contemplative thought is out, problem-solving and rote repetition of tasks is in.

(Of course, in a sense this is nothing new: education almost always serves the needs of the society footing the bill for it. If you think education isn't working or that the schools are crappy, it's not a bad idea to start asking why we have chosen that such should be the case.)

Anyway, here's Stanley Fish on a new book by a student of his, Frank Donoghue (called, incidentally The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities):

How has this happened? According to Donoghue, it’s been happening for a long time, at least since 1891, when Andrew Carnegie congratulated the graduates of the Pierce College of Business for being “ fully occupied in obtaining a knowledge of shorthand and typewriting” rather than wasting time “upon dead languages.”

Industrialist Richard Teller Crane was even more pointed in his 1911 dismissal of what humanists call the “life of the mind.” No one who has “a taste for literature has the right to be happy” because “the only men entitled to happiness . . . are those who are useful.”

The opposition between this view and the view held by the heirs of Matthew Arnold’s conviction that poetry will save us could not be more stark. But Donoghue counsels us not to think that the two visions are locked in a struggle whose outcome is uncertain. One vision, rooted in an “ethic of productivity” and efficiency, has, he tells us, already won the day; and the proof is that in the very colleges and universities where the life of the mind is routinely celebrated, the material conditions of the workplace are configured by the business model that scorns it.

The best evidence for this is the shrinking number of tenured and tenure-track faculty and the corresponding rise of adjuncts, part-timers more akin to itinerant workers than to embedded professionals.

I've ranted here before about the ascendancy of the corporate model for increasingly large shares of our world. By this I don't mean the corporate takeover and "privatization" of more and more of economic life. Rather, I'm referring to the adoption of an efficiency-obsessed, profit-fetishizing, model for non-business pursuits such as law, medicine, and yes, academia. Market pressures make an operation leaner; it's true. More efficient, sure. But one loses the point of pursuing law, medicine, or deep study of a subject. It's just not the right model for these things (or many others). I'm not going into it further here.

The main purpose of some (though increasingly few) pursuits is not the generation of profit.

So, even those who hoped to escape the god of efficiency by going into medicine or, say comparative literature, are reduced to "service delivery" cogs in an enormous profit-generating machine. And the profits are generated, no doubt there. But if you can deliver service without the doctor-- or with only 4 minutes of a doctor's time, or by eliminating tenured professors in favor of podcast lectures-- then that's efficient. But medicine is harmed. As is education. Fish and his student are right. I'm hoping against hope I don't end up in a miserable adjunct job for the rest of my life. Increasingly it's the kind of hope one generates on buying a Powerball ticket.

To repurpose a quote by Gov. Edwin Edwards: "A Ph.D. program is tax on people who are bad at math."

More from Fish:

The for-profit university is the logical end of a shift from a model of education centered in an individual professor who delivers insight and inspiration to a model that begins and ends with the imperative to deliver the information and skills necessary to gain employment.

In this latter model , the mode of delivery – a disc, a computer screen, a video hook-up – doesn’t matter so long as delivery occurs. Insofar as there are real-life faculty in the picture, their credentials and publications (if they have any) are beside the point, for they are just “delivery people.”
...

Those ideas have now triumphed (Carnegie and Crane are victorious), and this means, Donoghue concludes, “that all fields deemed impractical, such as philosophy, art history, and literature, will henceforth face a constant danger of being deemed unnecessary.” And as a corollary “professors will come to be seen by everyone (not just those outside the academy) as unaffordable anomalies.”

In other news: in an effort to save the state a couple of bucks, Gov. Jindal has proposed cutting health care (never medicine, now) and higher education. One of the departments on the chopping block?

Mine.

Albums of 2008

2009-01-18T11:15:00.015-06:00

Now is the time when I usually realize a new year has started, and it's time to pay attention to what music is going to be coming out. It's also the time I assemble my halfassed list of albums that stuck with me over the past year. Not a bad year for music, really. I don't know how many of these I'll be listening to in a decade, but there's probably one or two in here.

The theme, if there is one, is decidedly retro. I suspect I'm getting old...

What normally prompts this post? Realizing that my friend Dan over in Sha nghai has his list up already. A comparison of finds is in order, as always.

These, however, are in no particular order. I have decided that ranking art is fascist.

Raphael Saadiq: The Way I See It
This album sounds like 1963, then 1968, then 75. You get the idea. The former lead for Tony! Toni! Toné! manages to point out the cracks and crevices Soul and R&B left behind a few decades back. The result is an album of music that sounds like an old favorite you had forgotten you were missing. There's a remarkable collaboration with Stevie Wonder, and the collaboration with Rebirth and the Infamous Young Spodie on the Katrina meditation "Big Easy" is not to be missed. Utterly retro and utterly, urgently, contemporary. This album will stay on heavy rotation for a while.

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds: Dig, Lazarus, Dig!
This album, on the other hand, is timeless in the same way that all of Nick Cave's albums are timeless. There's no bowing to convention, to fad or fashion. There's just Cave's poetic turn of phrase, idiosyncratic phrasing, and hypnotic melodies and rhythms. The themes (as always) are dark, the lyrics wry and smirking. ("He never asked to be raised up from the tomb / No one ever actually asked him to forsake his dreams...") I'm a sucker for just about everything Cave does, I admit.

Grouper: Dragging a Dead Deer Up A Hill
My brother recommended this one to me, and he was, as he often is, right. This albums melodic lines rise from the subconscious awake, asleep, and in the sunless light times in between. "Heavy Water/I'd Rather Be Sleeping" is the kind of song that works with the electronic production at which Grouper excels, but it would be just as powerful sung by a single voice. It's the heartbreaking music you hear just before you wake up, and can never quite recall afterward.

Beck: Modern Guilt
Like you're driving at night somewhere between mountains and desert and you've stumbled on the best AM radio station ever, but the transmission's so garbled you never really hear the name of the songs or the singers properly.

Wynton Marsalis and Willie Nelson: Two Men With the Blues
The entire notion of this album is preposterous. Willie Nelson? The ancient country songwriter with the honey and whiskey voice, known for sparking up on the White House roof? And Wynton Marsalis? Whose concession to the weekend is a two-piece suit? Who is never far from the assertion that Jazz is Great Art? Whose playing is so pure and precise it's barely human? It's true. These men have the musician's love for playing with a true master. Wynton has fun. And Willie swings. "Wynton and Willie." OK. Ain't nobody's business if they do.

Bonnie Prince Billy: Lie Down in the Light
This is what a folk album is supposed to sound like. Even when Will Oldham plugs in, his music still sounds stripped down. The songs are, as on his other work, spare and haunting. They sound older than they are, and the lyrics echo with imagery from early early folklore, religion, myth. It's a lot of freight for a guy with a guitar to carry, but Oldham pulls it off so often it's easy to forget how hard it is to do.

Sonny Rollins: Road Shows, Vol.1
This is one of the best jazz albums to come out in years, I don't mind saying. I'm no expert on the subject. I'm unable to hang with the scribes and scholars of jazz minutiae who know every combo lineup for every sax player since 1948. But I know a master and a genius when I hear one. And I know when said master is playing well. These recordings capture both instances. "Blossom" and "Easy Living" show such supple phrasing, such improvisational power, that I can't listen without a grin. He's like a trapeze artist trying impossible leaps and never missing.

Q-Tip: The Renaissance
I liked Tribe Called Quest, OK? I thought Q-Tip's sly tone, easy flow and clever lyrics made the group, in many ways. He, along with a couple of other artists, showed that hip hop could engage a larger world. On The Renaissance, Q-Tip shows he hasn't lost a step. His storytelling powers are as solid as ever, and his collaborations (especially with Raphael Saadiq on "We Fight / We Love") are smart and occasionally surprising. Only 'Tip could make Norah Jones (I mean, Norah @#$%ing Jones!) sound funky.

Conor Oberst: Conor Oberst
"Cape Canaveral" is stuck in my head and won't go away. ("hey mother interstate / Can you deliver me from evil / Make me honest make me wedding cake? /Atone, I will atone.") The singer/songwriter from Bright Eyes has turned out one of those albums that sounds like what American heartland music is supposed to sound like. It's a road music album, dealing with the kind of themes (Highway shrines where pilgrims disappear...) the genre calls up.

Billy Bragg: Mr. Love and Justice
Yes, he's an angry socialist. Sure, he thinks he's Woody Guthrie and Joe Strummer balled into one. It's OK. He kind of is. And the angry anti-corporate stuff is still there on songs like "The Johnny Carcinogenic Show". But where Bragg is at his best is when he escapes the realm of politics (if such a thing is possible? wink wink) for the personal. "You Make Me Brave" and "I Keep Faith" are as quietly rousing as anything he's ever written.

A special note:

Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes
Everybody loves Fleet Foxes. EVERYBODY. Even me. If you't don't at least like Fleet Foxes then please allow me to ask: What the HELL is the matter with you?

Honorable Mention:

Raveonettes: Lust, Lust, Lust (fuzziness. Think VU and Mazzy Star and Jesus and Mary Chain)

M83: Saturdays=Youth (The best of the 80s is back. Updated.).

My Morning Jacket: Evil Urges (I always like everything My Morning Jacket does more about 18 months after the release.)

The Raconteurs: Consolers of the Lonely (Some good songs on it, if you don't mind them sort of blending into each other),

Harvey Milk: Life...The Best Game in Town (The only reason this one didn't make the top ten is that I'm just not the right age for it anymore. This is hard, hard, loud unbridled RAWK, of the kind that would have melted my cortex and blown out my ears when I was an angry 17-year-old tooling around too fast in my dad's Datsun. Now I just hear it and say. "Wow. That's really awesome. But it's hard to write about Petrarch with it going in the background...")

And a note: one of the albums I listened to most this year is my brother's soon to be released Immolate Yourself, by Telefon Tel Aviv. This is easily his best work: melodic, rhythmic, incantatory, visceral. It comes out this week and you should buy it, for it is superb. The only reason it's not atop my list is because it's a 2009 release.

We Want Information!

2009-01-14T12:26:00.003-06:00

R.I.P. Patrick McGoohan. I watched waaay too many re-runs of The Prisoner on WGBH when I was an undergraduate. What an amazing show.

Of course, since I posted Prof. Marsalis...

2009-01-14T12:23:00.001-06:00

... My students this semester seem really smart. It's the first time in a while I've had to cut discussion short to move on to the next topic. Let's see how I feel in two months, but for now I'm hopeful.

That's one class.

Let's see about the one for tonight...

Encouraging Words From Branford Marsalis...

2009-01-08T11:16:00.003-06:00

... to start the semester. Great musician, insightful professor.

I only wish he weren't so right.

Woohoo! Tulane National Champs!

2009-01-06T10:29:00.001-06:00

...Just ask King Kaufman in Salon!

This column has already crowned its national champion. With its background in the boxing world, this column believes if you're not going to have a fair championship system, the best alternative is to crown the guy who beat the guy who beat the guy.

That guy is Tulane.

The Green Wave went 2-10 this year, but they made those wins count. One of them was over Louisiana-Monroe, so I think you see my point.

No? OK: Tulane beat Louisiana-Monroe, who beat Troy, who beat Middle Tennessee, who beat Maryland, who beat Wake Forest, who beat Mississippi.

Aha! Mississippi!

What do you mean, so what? Ole Miss beat Florida. But that's not all. The Rebels also beat Texas Tech, who beat Texas, who beat Oklahoma.

There's a direct line of losing from both teams in the BCS Championship Game to Tulane. That's what makes Tulane, last seen losing 45-6 to Memphis, your 2008 national champion.

Poetry on Christmas Eve

2008-12-24T09:13:00.003-06:00

First: Merry Christmas. This isn't exactly Christmas poetry at all, but it's one of my favorites, and it touches on some of the themes on my mind this time of year: the strangeness of the incarnation, and of the unnatural natural world we find ourselves in, and into which God projected himself (depending, of course, on one's beliefs, if any).

This one is by Geoffrey Hill, a former professor at BU, and a wonderfully good poet. His work is difficult, but I think difficult in the best way, that makes one strive to comprehend its beauty.

(A side note: this was first published in the sixties in Stand, which (he said not so humbly) just published four translations I did of the poems of Spanish poet Basilio Fernández.)

The Assisi Fragments

To G. Wilson Knight

1

Lion and lioness, the mild
Inflammable beasts,
At their precise peril kept
Distance and repose –
And there the serpent
Innocently shone its head.

2

So the hawk had its pursuit. So Death
Opened its childish eyes. So the angels
Overcame Adam: he was defiled
By Balm. Creator, and creature made
Of unnatural earth, he howled
To the raven find me; to the wolf
Eat, my brother; and to the fire I am clean.

Hitchens on Inauguration Invocators...

2008-12-22T11:48:00.002-06:00

Sometimes the guy just cracks me up. And this is one of the times I agree with him completely: Rick Warren has no business giving an invocation for the opening of a Denton, TX, Wal-Mart-- much less for the inauguration of a president. I'm not a fan of invocations in government in general (if you start out invoking divine aid, I worry about your confidence in your more mundane powers), and I don't really have the space or desire to go into everything I dislike about this Warren character (though he is a peculiarly American type).

So let's just let Hitchens do his thing:

...if the speaker says that heaven is a real place but that you will not get there if you are Jewish, or that Mormonism is a cult and a false religion but that other churches and faiths are the genuine article, then you know that the bigot has spoken. That's all in a day's work for the wonderful world of the American evangelical community, and one wishes them all the best of luck in their energetic fundraising and their happy-clappy Sunday "Churchianity" mega-feel-good fiestas. However, do we want these weirdos and creeps officiating in any capacity at the inauguration of the next president of the United States?

...if we must have an officiating priest, let it be some dignified old hypocrite with no factional allegiance and not a tree-shaking huckster and publicity seeker who believes that millions of his fellow citizens are hellbound because they do not meet his own low and vulgar standards.

The rest is here. It's worth a read.

There's Nothing That The Road Cannot Heal...

2008-12-21T16:49:00.007-06:00

I don't want to write about the usual post-semester stuff: the students begging me to give them .15 points so they can have the next highest grade (I swear to God every undergrad turns into John McKeithen on Dec. 18th: "Won't you he'p me?" Why not, right? Why not just bump everyone up a letter grade? Let's have some fun. I mean, a D is practically a C, right? Which is practically a B?)

Enough. As the semester ended, I took three days cycling on the Natchez end of the Natchez Trace Parkway. It was, to say the least, astonishing. The Trace runs roughly alongside the old route trappers and boatmen, Choctaws and Chickasaws, soldiers and preachers used to get around between the lower Mississippi and the southeastern U.S. (It's also the place where Meriwether Lewis died...)

Now it's a two-lane highway, with special provision to make it easier for cyclists. For some stretches last week, I never saw a car. And of the ones I saw, the - overwhelming majority did their best to give bikers a wide margin. (The only exception was a guy in a black Dodge pickup with Florida plates and an ATV in back, who rolled up on the shoulder and sent me racing up the embankment on the side of the road.)

Interspersed with this entry are shots of the Emerald Mound, a Mississippian temple mound (not to be confused with the later burial mounds constructed by the Natchez), the ruins of the old Windsor Plantation House, and the Natchez end trailhead.

Some highlights:

- Noodling around at about 13 mph for three days. My girlfriend likes to say that her trip up Kilimanjaro was "like meditation" in its extreme simplicity. From trips like this, I think I know what she means.

- Cramming about 5 lbs extra winter clothing into my panniers, only to have April weather the whole time.

- The deer I saw leaping both lanes of the highway shortly after sunrise.

- Lunch at the ruins of the old Windsor Plantation: "bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang..."

- The utterly crazy road to Windsor, with its razor-edge shoulder and unending sequence of steep, twisty hills. It's hard to get a loaded bike up to 37 mph. This trail did it. Thought I might die. Didn't though.

- Getting out before the second freak cold snap of the season. Yeehaw.

I covered the distance between Natchez and Jackson, more or less, and then back, over the course of three days. I wanted to take a week and do the whole thing one way-- Natchez to Nashville-- and then take the train home. But there were a few problems with this idea.

1. Nashville has no passenger train service. I mean, really, WTF? How can a city claim to be a major metropolitan area and not have passenger rail service?

2. The above being the case, I was going to have to rent a car. Not too expensive, really, but I'm a grad student. And wasn't this supposed to be a biking trip?

3. Oh yeah-- grad student. How much of my dissertation did I manage to write this semester? Not enough to justify my taking an entire week to bike around.

4. School schedule. I gave my final on Saturday, and grades were due by Wednesday. Not much time between then and Christmas, when I need to be home for various festivities. And I don't like to be rushed.

So the full trip will have to wait. Ideally I'd like to go there and back. But I'd need about two weeks, and I don't know where I'm going to find them. But a through-trip is easily manageable, if I could just learn to cut down on the volume of gear I'm willing to haul...

Weather Strikes Again

2008-12-11T10:00:00.007-06:00

I woke this morning before my usual time. It was quiet. Beautifully quiet. Even more quiet than things normally are before 6 a.m.. That was because the underlying background hum of electrical appliances-- my refrigerator, for example-- weren't running. The reason?

This:

(I had to take photos with my phone, because my camera battery is dead.) Here's another one from today's Times-Pic:

Of course, the city has shut down. Drivers in this area have absolutely no @#$%ing idea what to do in the snow-- how to drive in it, what not to do. So there are accidents galore, interstates closed, talk-radio announcers hyperventilating.

And best of all: no power for several hours this morning (though obviously I have it now). So I took out the handy MSR stove and fired it up and made a very excellent mug of coffee, which threw off a cloud of fragrant steam into my icy apartment. Then I sat down with it in my rocking chair with a copy of Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang (which I'm rereading because I may be teaching it next semester), and listened to the happy squeals of the children across the street who woke up to pre-Christmas snow.

I think I'd rather have the city shut down for snow than for hurricanes.

For those of you...

2008-12-10T17:18:00.004-06:00

...who are beginning to feel a little pissed off about big companies and their media shills exhorting you all day long to buy a bunch of crap because if you don't the people you love will hate you and the people you want to impress will think you're broke or worse a cheapskate and anyway buying stuff is the only way to participate fully in this society as a consumer of everything of goods and services and products and politics and music and text and land and people and power and light and the economy's going to hell and this might be your very last chance to participate before it all goes to hell and you want to be a good member of society right?

Thanks Invader Zim-- and to Camille Paglia in Salon. I sang this to myself yesterday as I did my (sigh) Christmas Shopping.

What on Earth?!?!

2008-12-06T22:48:00.005-06:00

Anh "Joseph" Cao, a Vietnamese Republican just won the race for Louisiana Second District-- the most egregiously gerrymandered slice of racial engineering I've ever seen anywhere.

He's a moderate. A lawyer, a former professor of philosophy, a former Jesuit seminarian. He's for immigration reform that includes amnesty. He's for wetlands restoration. And it's about damn time New Orleans's Vietnamese population becomes more visible politically. They have become an essential part of our culture here.

Who'd he beat? "Dollar" Bill Jefferson. (A side note: what a waste. Jefferson is a very, very smart man, and I have no doubt that in many ways he began with the noblest of intentions, but the sound of bars slamming shut is beginning to follow him around.)

Seriously. He's out. I'm thrilled. Stunned. I thought Cao had less than no chance. The Jefferson machine just doesn't lose races. Not this kind of race. No matter how many corruption charges the feds level at him. I told my sister this evening not to get her hopes up-- that there was no way he could win (in my best supercilious, know-it-all tone).

Thank God I was wrong. For once, we didn't re-elect the guy under indictment (16 federal counts of corruption). And we've placed the first Vietnamese guy ever in the U.S. House.

From the AP:

The district, which was drawn to give African-Americans an electoral advantage, covers most of New Orleans, most of Jefferson Parish's West Bank and parts of south Kenner. About two-thirds of the district's voters are registered as Democrats.

As predicted, turnout appears to be have been dismally low.

Sure, he's a Republican. But I'm not loyal to parties, and being Republican is not necessarily a bad thing (though in typical fashion, we're becoming almost entirely Republican as a state at the very moment power is swinging to the Democrats). I'm just happy that for once we had the choice between a possible crook and a reasonably honest guy, and we went for the latter.

This is one weird state.

More from nola.com here.

It's Been A While

2008-12-05T11:15:00.003-06:00

... and I'm tired of politics, so today you're going to get a little something else-- a little sense of the kind of things I come across as I try to wrap up my degree at a large state university in the south.

For the end of the semester, I like to assign a take-home final exam. This is literature, not physics. I think it makes more sense for students to have a second to gather their thoughts and set them on paper elegantly. I have always thought that the timed, in-class exam essay was more of a parlor trick than a true measure of one's mastery of the material. So I spend weeks coming up with the kind of question students are unlikely to find easily on the Internet. And I did a nice job this year: the students are to draft a dialogue (no more than two pages!) between any two characters from two different works we have read this semester (anything from Gilgamesh to The Tempest, for the most part. Wide range.) The characters are to discuss literature: what it is, what it does, whether it matters or not.

I draft an entire page of guidelines, setting out in minute, exquisite detail exactly what the students should do: what's off limits, what the formatting parameters are, the exact second it is due and in what form.

I spend ten minutes in class going over this thing-- despite the fact that I've posted it on our class website, so they can read it for themselves. And after I've done answering questions until I'm out of breath and feeling sort of silly for taking so much time with a really simple procedure, a student raises his hand.

I call on him. He says: "So, like, you want us to make something up?"

Then I go all Mr. Hand/Severus Snape on him:

"Mr. QQQQQ, are you on drugs? I sincerely hope you are, because if you aren't then the only explanation for such an extravagantly stupid question is your profound and soul-crushing mediocrity. It's the sort of thing that makes me laugh bitterly at you over my cheap wine in the evening, and weep for the future as I lay awake nights praying for blissful sleep."

A riot ensues. Students are jumping out of their chairs, threatening to inform the dean of my sarcastic and condescending teaching style. I set them up to fail, they say; then I fail them. Then I mock them. I throw my lectern at the loudest of the rabble (I think it takes him in the solar plexus; I hear a gasping for breath), then jump on the desk brandishing our 450-pound World Literature Anthology (compact edition).

"Who's first?" I say, surveying the mob with a steely glare. "I only wish that my spirit and fury would drive me / to hack your meat away and eat it raw for the things that / you have done to me..."

They charge.

Not really, of course.

The kid did really ask "So, like, you want us to make something up?"

And I answered: "Yes, Mr. QQQQQ. Make something up."

And you thought our media were biased...

2008-11-06T18:04:00.003-06:00

Here's what a newspaper warned would happen if the candidate it didn't favor made it into the White House:

“Neighbors will become the enemies of neighbors, fathers of their sons, and sons of their fathers. Murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will openly be taught and practised, the air will be rent with the cries of distress, the soil soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes.”

Stronger stuff than "socialist" or "erratic", no?

The paper was the Hartford Courant.

The year: 1800

The presidential candidate: Thomas Jefferson.

I know. I've been on kind of a Jefferson kick lately. I really like going through his papers. The man could write. Even his letters are models of careful wording and rhetoric. If he had an online journal, it would be brilliant, fascinating, nuanced reading every day. I'm so ashamed of the dreck I lob y'all's way in comparison.

President-Elect Obama

2008-11-04T22:36:00.004-06:00

Before I go back to my typical practice of cynical, sniping criticism and despair barely kept at bay, for one night I am going to allow myself the luxury of being profoundly, intensely, moved.

This is surely a country worth loving.

Oh NO! Obama's Winning-- and the Markets are Tanking!!!

2008-11-04T17:21:00.002-06:00

Except that they're not.

Far from it.

The S&P 500 added 39.45 points, or 4.1 percent, to 1,005.75, its first close above 1,000 since Oct. 13. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 305.45, or 3.3 percent, to 9,625.28. The Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 53.79, or 3.1 percent, to 1,780.12. Gains in Europe and Asia sent the MSCI World Index to a sixth straight advance.

Today's advance in the S&P 500 and Dow average are the biggest for a presidential Election Day since the NYSE first opened for trading during voting in 1984. The S&P 500 rose on four and fell on two of the previous presidential election days since then, averaging a 0.3 percent gain.

I would LOVE to hear the blowhards** who have been tying an Obama surge to the market collapse ("It's his tax policy!" "It's his economic plan!") explain this one...

By the way: lined up to vote today at 5:45 a.m.. Long line out the polling place, through the gate, and up the block (but that's probably just because of the Upper Audubon Security District measure on the ballot).

Then I went to school to teach a class on Boccaccio's Decameron. About a sixth of the students who actually showed up hadn't read. This annoyed me, and I told them so. (Actually I said that it makes me cry when they don't read-- and contemplate throwing them out of class if they can't contribute to the conversation.) But those that read had a good discussion, I think.

I can't wait for this election to be over, so I feel like I can write about more important things again. Like outdoor trips and poetry and music and the occasional sporting event.

[** Limbaugh and Hannity, the walking punchline, among others...]

Noted Lefty Commie Rag Endorses Obama

2008-10-30T17:19:00.002-05:00

It's The Economist.

Here's a bit from a very nuanced, yet hopeful and enthusiastic endorsement:

Mr Obama’s star quality will be useful to him as president. But that alone is not enough to earn him the job. Charisma will not fix Medicare nor deal with Iran. Can he govern well? Two doubts present themselves: his lack of executive experience; and the suspicion that he is too far to the left.

There is no getting around the fact that Mr Obama’s résumé is thin for the world’s biggest job. But the exceptionally assured way in which he has run his campaign is a considerable comfort. It is not just that he has more than held his own against Mr McCain in the debates. A man who started with no money and few supporters has out-thought, out-organised and outfought the two mightiest machines in American politics—the Clintons and the conservative right.

Political fire, far from rattling Mr Obama, seems to bring out the best in him: the furore about his (admittedly ghastly) preacher prompted one of the most thoughtful speeches of the campaign. On the financial crisis his performance has been as assured as Mr McCain’s has been febrile. He seems a quick learner and has built up an impressive team of advisers, drawing in seasoned hands like Paul Volcker, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. Of course, Mr Obama will make mistakes; but this is a man who listens, learns and manages well.

The rest is here.

Oh, geez...

2008-10-28T08:58:00.002-05:00

Not enough time today to do a full entry. I'm engrossed in the work of Petrarch, and trying to prep a small lecture on the Renaissance for my bewildered and ahistorical students.

Meanwhile, read Christopher Hitchens on anti-intellectual politicians. You know who they are. We had a little discussion about "out of touch intellectuals" here last week.

Here's a quote:

This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.

The rest is here.

Midterms

2008-10-24T09:28:00.003-05:00

Yes, it's true. I'm actually posting a Doonesbury comic.

It's just appropriate, that's all...

In Case You Missed it...

2008-10-19T22:29:00.002-05:00

From the transcript of Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama this morning. It's something I had been waiting and hoping against hope that someone prominent would say in a big forum beside a huge audience. And Powell finally said it.

Here it is:

"I'm also troubled by, not what Sen. McCain says, but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said such things as: "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is: he is not a Muslim. He's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is: What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is: No, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she can be president?"

Ya era hora, mis panas...

In Another Country

2008-10-17T17:08:00.005-05:00

And, I might add, in another lifetime, I worked as a staff reporter at a legal newspaper in Atlanta. I left for a variety of reasons (the chief of which was that I wasn't such a great reporter, and was tired and discouraged from plugging away for nearly 10 years). But during the time I was there I had a glimpse of the way politics and law intersect. There were plenty of sleazebags with outsized egos, but there were plenty of genuinely good people too-- people who would tell the truth if you asked them tricky questions.

I'm bringing this up, because during election season a bit of the reporter conditioning comes back again, and I have an itch to see polling data, to talk to the flacks, to get a sense of who's going to be in and who's going to be out.

This is a very roundabout way of bringing up a race that I find very interesting, even though I no longer live in Georgia-- and that's the Georgia Senate race. I had run ins with both Saxby Chambliss and Jim Martin, and my encounters with each of them couldn't have been more different.

Chambliss couldn't find time between preening for right-wing media and bullying his political opponents ever to study a policy issue he made a misguided pronouncement on. He was forcefully, loudly, pridefully ignorant-- willing to wave the flag over whatever jingoed set of authoritarian bushwah he dangled in front of his Rotarian supporters and the slackjawed hicks the former seem to embrace every election season. Chambliss got into office with the aid of a series of breathtakingly vile ads questioning the patriotism of former Sen. Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in Vietnam. He is, in short, not a credit to the august body of which he is a member. Hates gays, trees, immigrants and the people who stick up for them. Hates anything that might interfere with his tee time. Think Judge Smales without the charm and restraint.(He also voted against just about every aid package for New Orleans after Katrina-- all while funneling money to his corporate overlords...)

Martin, on the other hand, is an incredibly thoughtful guy. A legal aid lawyer, an 18-year veteran of the Georgia Legislature (with an admirable record of finding money for services while scaling back costs), Martin always struck me as methodical, accessible, honest. I interviewed him a time or two for various stories, and each time his conversation was measured, intelligent, clearly the result of having thought about the subject long before I asked about it. He was willing to take on incredibly thankless jobs (Georgia Department of Human Resources, anyone? Georgia Public Defender Standards Council?) This is a guy who likes to do good work, and doesn't worry much about the credit. (Did I mention that he volunteered to serve in Vietnam? Chambliss got a handful of deferments, but that doesn't stop him from talking big.)

For you wonked-out types: Martin's pro- civil liberties (opposes FISA, for example), strong on veterans' affairs, strong on the environment. Most important of all: I have the same tie he's wearing in the photo, and it's one of my favorites.

Martin has next to no money, and he's challenging an incumbent Republican who has whored himself out to every business interest withing a 750-mile radius (and who had to return "gifts" from Jack Abramoff, after he was busted, by the way...)

But he's running close. Within the margin of error, according to recent polls.

A Martin win would be an enormous credit to the Georgia electorate-- good not only for Georgia but for the rest of the country.

I'm not holding my breath though. Chambliss is the kind of politician who doesn't mind clubbing the baby seal to get into office.

As an Atlanta lawyer buddy of mine (and Martin supporter) writes: "I don't think he will prevail unless The Cool One at the top of the ticket has some incredibly wide and strong coat tails..."

But I'd sure like to see it happen.

More here.

Come, Armageddon, Come

2008-10-13T21:28:00.009-05:00

I cannot be the only person who HATES the promo the NFL insists on playing over and over again. You know the one-- the one that features cowboys out on the range, keeping track of the football scores by cell phone.

At first I tried to tune it out and hope it would go away. But it didn't and I can't ignore it any longer. I hate that ad. HATE it. I hate it for two reasons.

First, and less important, is the faux-folksy bullshit about us real men out in the wilderness, keeping up with sports through the wonders of modern technology. It also reminds me that all the world is gridded and striated. We have to have a bunch of technology because, well, EVERYBODY has this technology. Even cowboys. So what's your problem? Why don't you bring your cell phone into the woods? Why aren't you constantly in touch?

You get my point.

But MOST irritating is that the promo cribs a line from a most excellent song by Morrissey (one of my favorites, in fact): "Everyday is Like Sunday." The line they crib? Well, the title line (NFL games are on Sunday! Get it?). Not Morrissey singing it, though. It's covered by some country assmunch (probably that redneck halfwit Toby Keith, guessing from the way the league gauges popular tastes).

The lyrics run like this:

Trudging slowly over wet sand
Back to the bench where your clothes were stolen
This is the coastal town
That they forgot to close down
Armageddon - come armageddon!
Come, armageddon! come!

Everyday is like sunday
Everyday is silent and grey

Hide on the promenade
Etch a postcard :
How I dearly wish I was not here
In the seaside town
...that they forgot to bomb
Come, come, come - nuclear bomb

Everyday is like sunday
Everyday is silent and grey

Trudging back over pebbles and sand
And a strange dust lands on your hands
(and on your face...)
(on your face ...)
(on your face ...)
(on your face ...)

Everyday is like sunday
Win yourself a cheap tray
Share some greased tea with me
Everyday is silent and grey

Oh, yeah. This guy LOVES that shit:

Let's get something clear. I like Morrissey a lot. A LOT. His music solo and with The Smiths is the soundtrack to much of my youth. I kind of like pro football. I'm tied to the Saints in ways I can never undo properly. I'm utterly indifferent to the NFL (and I kind of think most serious fans are in some way psychotic).

But that's all secondary. I think I'm most annoyed that the NFL-- the pinnacle of glitzy, tacky, marketing-driven, knee-jerk cheap-ass maudlin patriotism (viz, Fox's airplanes and flags pregame)-- can yank a line from a pacifist, literate, vegetarian, British musician's song about the depressing remnants of a resort town, and turn it into an anthem for yahoo celebration-- and a reason to buy a goddam cellphone with sports updates. There's something sick about what the market does in this country.

So let's crib part of another Morrissey line. Everyone's doing it these days. You people responsible for the ad should be bludgeoned in your bed...

And Another Thing...

2008-10-10T19:42:00.003-05:00

Go Sox!!

Buckley for Obama

2008-10-10T19:08:00.004-05:00

That's Christopher Buckley. He's a Republican. He's conservative. He's an elegant and very, very funny writer. (Boomsday had me laughing through much of last summer,and some of its lines have become catch-phrases for me and a few of my guiding buddies...) Though occasionally we disagree ideologically, I almost always enjoy his writing.

I would even sneak looks at the back page of the National Review (I work in a lit department, after all) just to see his essays.

He is the son of William F. Buckley, Jr., National Review's founder, and longtime host of Firing Line. Buckley was the master of the arch commentary, the print equivalent of the raised eyebrow, a champion of the reasoned argument against the cheap and tawdry political nostrums many on the left cling to. He was one of the foremost sages of the modern conservative movement, and his writings still inspire a certain species of activist on the Right.

His son Christopher plans to vote for Barack Obama.

Here's a salient quote:

I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian. I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P.J. O’Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.

And here's another:

This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain—who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust.

Come on, you many conservatives among my loved ones: come join us.

You know you want to...

Clean Offshore Drilling

2008-10-08T23:48:00.005-05:00

Lest we get too excited about this cure-all, this miracle procedure, this cheap, practical, sensible, and most of all ecologically safe-as-houses policy of drilling offshore (*ahem* thusprolongingourceaselessravenouslustforoil *cough*): keep this in mind.

That new saw about how safe offshore drilling is? How not a teensy little drop of oil was spilled-- even when Katrina hit the Gulf in 2005?

It's a lie.

Almost 18 thousand barrels spilled. And that's just offshore. hundreds of thousands more more spilled onshore.

By comparison, the Exxon Valdez spilled 257,000 barrels, more or less. So we're not talking disaster on that scale at all (though if you factor in the onshore failures, we certainly are in that ballpark.) But a little less than 18,000 barrels is no joke either.

Repeat it to yourself if you have to, because we're going to be hearing about safe offshore drilling a lot over the next month.

I'll get you started. Repeat after me: liarliarliesliesit'salieit'salieit'salie.

For kicks you also can check out the inimitable Greg Peters at Suspect Device, as he envisioned a conversation between Sen. McCain and Gov. Jindal, when the former was still seeking a running mate in August.

(That said, I think the governor did a really nice job during Gustav. I'm being serious.)

This is Bipartisanship

2008-10-08T14:06:00.004-05:00

Anybody else catch this statement by Sen. John McCain during the debate last night?

I'm not too popular sometimes with my own party, much less his.

Weird. Just weird. The fact that nobody likes you, while charmingly self-deprecating, is not the best advertisement for one's ability to get things done.

I'm voting for Obama, but I actually felt bad for McCain last night. I like grumpy old guys (I plan on being one in the not-so-distant future). I have tremendous respect for the man-- for many reasons. But last night he was exposed. He was groping-- like an old guy groping for his reading glasses so he can read the screen at the grocery store checkout.

More mortgage bailouts. Tax credits for healthcare (a surefire recipe for healthcare costs to skyrocket, because HMOs will take it as a subsidy. $2,500 credit? No healthcare for less than $2,500). Bad jokes about hair transplants. Implying that Sen. Obama is just a cheeky young whippersnapper.

It was kind of sad. This is not McCain as I have seen him before. Where is the guy who fought the White House on torture? who made (misguided, but well-intentioned) efforts to tangle with immigration and election reform? who called Falwell an "agent of intolerance"? McCain's campaign is not showing him in the best light. And it's shameful. He's a good man, and he deserves better.

Not that I would vote for him in this case. (Though I could envision myself voting for him under other circumstances.) I just think this prolonged campaign is extending misery for him-- and for anyone who watches his performance.

I can't wait for the month to be up. And I hope McCain finds a way to lose with his dignity intact.

Some Perspective

2008-10-06T11:05:00.002-05:00

Here's a fun quote:

"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed
corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

Eugene Debs? No.

Thomas Jefferson (in an 1816 letter to George Logan-- in Vol. 12 of the Ford Edition of Jefferson's correspondence)

Just sayin'.

The Debate-- But Only as it Touches on Literature

2008-10-02T22:42:00.002-05:00

I have to have some sort of limit, or I will rant all night.

I wish Gov. Palin had managed to remember or learn, or memorize for recital, that the phrase "city on a hill" does not, alas, come from her hero Ronald Reagan. It is (just a little) older than that. It comes from a 1630 sermon by Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop called A Model of Christian Charity. (One might note that Winthrop's version of colonial exceptionalism included oligarchy, heresy trials and hangings for adultery.)

Other than that, not such a bad guy for his time. He was a Puritan, after all, with all the good and bad that come with it-- and there was a great deal of both. The sermon truly is an important one, and is a call to strive for perfection in community, rather than in some status as Supernation by Divine Right, forcing others to conform to its will. (Others' interpretations have differed, I hardly need add...)

Of course, Winthrop was cribbing himself-- from the Sermon on the Mount (specifically 5:14)**. I'm actually rather surprised Gov. Palin didn't take the opportunity to jam a biblical "shout out" in there with the ones to kindergarten and her homies in Wasilla. One would think she would like to recite the words of Jesus Christ on a national stage. Or is the Christ of the Sermon just a little too radical for the Republican ticket?

I suppose it's too much to ask for people to know the history of the catchphrases they've memorized, mynah bird-like, and which now they toss around like so much shiny electoral confetti?

(**That's no knock on Winthrop. The Sermon on the Mount is a spectacular piece of writing and social policy from which to steal. Uncle Kurt Vonnegut wrote, near the end of his life:

"if Christ hadn't delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I'd just as soon be a rattlesnake"

As happens so often when I read Vonnegut-- especially when he's being funny, I agree.)

What Doesn't Bore Me

2008-09-29T17:00:00.004-05:00

...I'm not posting any more on the economy. I'm no expert, and frankly, when it's not scaring me to death as it has over the past month, it bores me to death. So I'm knocking it off.

What doesn't bore the hell out of me? Well, Virgil's Aeneid. I like the Aeneid a lot, and I'm teaching it tomorrow in my world lit class. I'm assuming that the vast majority of the class will not have read it, since they also have papers due. But I think I'm going to have enough time to get through some of the most interesting and important passages.

I also should note that the Aeneid is the source of some family folklore. My brother and I got into a fight one time about ten years ago about whether Achilles had a son. I maintained he didn't-- and bet $10 accordingly.

In short: Josh was right. I was full of it. (He still knows the work better than I do-- having read it in Latin in its entirety.)

However, the event evidently was such a coup that Josh refused to cash the check for weeks, bearing it like a talisman.

So I'll make sure to include Pyrrhus's (or Neoptólemos's) scene tomorrow.

Did We Become a Republic While I Wasn't Looking?

2008-09-29T16:53:00.003-05:00

That can't be the reason the House rejected the bailout bill this afternoon, can it? The middle seemed content to grit its teeth and push the thing through, while the idealists on the Left and Right opposed it.

Is this realpolitik's pummeling? Or its apotheosis?

Don't misunderstand me: this was an appallingly bad bill-- only marginally better than the unbelievably calculated pile Treasury Secretary Paulson tried to foist on us earlier ($700 billion. Now. Damn your questions-- we've got to move!). The new bill was only better in comparison with the first offering. A shit sandwich-- with some catsup and a pickle or two.

The "protections" for the taxpayers were minimal-- unspecified warrants with no guarantee of any kind of value, since nobody seems to know what these arcane instruments are worth.

And who would be assigned to find a fair value for these investments? Why, the very people who managed to screw the system up in the first place. Also, the cap on compensation seems barely worth the name. (I understand, by the way, that by capping compensation, we might be driving away the best and brightest, but this is a best and brightest that either 1. didn't know what the hell it was doing or 2. knew what it was doing and decided to loot the suckers in the market anyway. Screw them both.)

Pretty it up as you might (and God knows, many have tried), this bill was a massive handout from poor people to the careless, heedless wealthy buffoons in finance. As long as voters continue to believe this (and there is plenty of indication they will), passing a bailout in this form is going to be difficult.

What a government. The president couldn't marshal his party for the most important financial push in a century-- and the Speaker of the House did only marginally better with her party.

I wonder what's going to come of all of this. We're going to have to do something, of course, to ease the pain we're about to undergo. But how? A massive debt-equity swap? An attempt to shore up that gap in capital by flinging some enormous sum of money at the void? Just leaving Wall Street to twist in the wind, while the rest of us prepare for some lean decades?

Of course today's votes were a way for dissenters to cover their ample asses. This was no democracy in action. It just looks that way. I'm worried about the long-term effects. Recession without doubt. A new rise of class resentment? It's here already.

For much more cogent analysis, check out this essay by Joseph Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia with a Nobel in Economics. He can explain what's happening here almost as well as I can.

Meanwhile I'll enjoy a few hours of schadenfreude.

Burn baby burn...

One of the Best Pieces I've Seen So Far...

2008-09-25T22:15:00.004-05:00

...on problems with Paulson's plan, and the inherent injustice of how this is going to play out. Those with mounds of capital get a deal and get private profits. Those without get to pay higher taxes for the rest of their grandchildrens' lives.

These guys are going to make a full-fledged revolutionary Marxist out of me yet-- and that's not an ideological stance for which I strive.

Here's a quote from a superb piece in The Nation by William Greider:

The underlying power relationship in this crisis has been artfully obscured by the bailout sponsors because they decline to explain clearly what the bailout really is intended to accomplish. First, they said it was to restore calm in markets. Then they said it was the rotten assets centered in mortgage securities. But the problem is more accurately described as the great deflation of Wall Street's illusions--inflated prices, profits, deals, commissions and bonuses. You name it, they ran it up to stratospheric levels. Now the dream is dying and values are falling, but have not yet hit bottom.

To put it more concretely, the banks and investment houses have lost massive amounts of capital--a hole that is real, not psychological. Maybe $1 trillion, possibly twice that. We can't say exactly, because the banks have still not come clean and because assets in bank portfolios continue to lose value as housing prices continue to deflate.

The great capital losses mean Wall Street is sure to get smaller--a lot smaller--with fewer firms, less leveraged deals based on inadequate capital and a general retreat from its domineering role in economic life. Personally, I believe a smaller Wall Street will be good for the country, part of restoring balance to the damaged economy.

In any case, it is folly for Washington to imagine that it can--or should--simply replenish Wall Street's great loss. That essentially is what Paulson's blanket bailout attempts to do--restore conditions to "normal" by buying up the bad assets from banks at inflated prices. In other words, supply the missing capital that private lenders won't provide. Good luck with that.

Agree or disagree with Greider ideologically (I tend to agree more often than not), he knows how to put together an insightful analysis. I really like his work, and this article should be required reading.

Here's the link.

Oh, and by the way...

2008-09-25T00:37:00.002-05:00

... Sen. McCain: it's just a debate. Really. It's discussing foreign policy and consulting your economic advisers to find an approach to our sputtering economy.

Which of the two is so taxing that you feel you must call one of them off?

And what job was it that you wanted again...?

Bailout Deal

2008-09-24T18:47:00.005-05:00

It's obvious I'm not a financial expert. I'm barely literate economically. Barely. I've read Malthus and Marx, Keynes and Samuelson, Von Mises and Friedman, but it pretty much stops there. So I'm not going to offer any well-founded, careful analysis of this bailout deal. It would be dishonest of me even to attempt it. (Unlike some nameless others who watch Cavuto on Fox or read David Brooks in the NYT and decide they know all they need to know on how to fix things...)

Instead, I'm going to write from the gut, from my sense of fairness and what I feel would be just. Sure, the bailout deal makes me nervous, and the buffoons debating how to draft it and implement it make me very, very nervous, but there's nothing I can do about that (such a sad statement to have to make in a purportedly representative system of government).

So I'll just offer this: I'm against any bailout that does not include forfeiture of all assets and Chapter 7 bankruptcy for every Titan of Industry who benefited from this Potemkin Golden Age of the past decade.

Who will the creditors of said bankruptcy filing be, you might ask? Why, the U.S. taxpayer, who is footing the bill for this bailout.

All those bespoke suit-wearing catamite assholes should have to suck the pipe. It's their goddam fault. These guys are all private profit, gated community, mineminemine capitalists when they're making money, but when they fuck everything up they turn socialist and want to share the pain. If your industry is too big to fail we'll have to do something to save it, but you arrogant geniuses are going to have to pay. Individually.

They should consider themselves lucky. When I am god-emperor, people like this will go to jail. After a week of public humiliation in the pillory.

Catullus might have said it best: Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo which translator extraordinaire Peter Green renders: "Up yours both, and sucks to the pair of you" (which is pretty close, but the original is much dirtier...)

So It's Been More Than Five Months...

2008-09-14T17:48:00.005-05:00

...I'm sure y'all got along fine without me.

Let's see if we can get you caught up in the space of one very, very comprehensive post:

1. I passed my generals. The committee was psyched-- even the dean's representative and the member who asked some very thought-provoking, very scholarly questions, listened sagely to my answers, then announced he had a lunch date, signed my papers, shook my hand in congratulations and bailed.

2. My prospectus was approved, with enthusiasm, I'd venture to say. There are some very fun things in the offing based on it. That said: I've already revised it.

2a: Since some of you are going to ask: I'm writing about the notion of the Book of Nature: how the way we read wilderness affects how we write about it (not to mention contrariwise). With a particular emphasis on foundational ecology.

2b. I'll never be done. That's the point of a Ph.D. program. Stop asking.

3. I did spend the summer in the San Juan Islands again. Amazing summer. This year's job included side jaunts to British Columbia and a couple of extra weeks in Wyoming and Montana, and a side trip to see my amazing, brilliant cousin who moved to Albuquerque earlier this year to start a residency program. Only one medical evacuation, and it was smooooove.

3a. I probably have one more summer in me, depending how my dissertation work goes this year.

3b. There are some pictures from the summer at the flickr site.

4. I evacuated for Gustav. I, uh, went paddling at the Ocoee. I got power back again last week, as did my parents. The farm, however, looks a bit rough. It might be a month before it's up and running properly again. And it might be a year before we fix all the little things the storm damaged. And I'm still not moved into my new apartment.

5. I'm not living where I used to live. But I'm still in Baton Rouge pretty often.

6. I'm teaching at LSU again: Introduction to World Literature: Semester One (which runs approximately Gilgamesh to The Tempest). Excellent times. My student seem very sharp and the reading has been fun. I wish I were a good enough teacher to do these amazing works justice. Sometimes I feel the students are getting shortchanged by not having a real prof read this stuff with them.

7. OK, so I've been busy. I have waaay too much going on right now. There is illness, romance, adventure. But I'll write more often. I promise.

8. My translations of Basilio Fernández's poetry have run in Stand. Check it out.

9. If Barak Obama is really going to raise your taxes, dinner is on you next time. See chart:

10. What the hell,Saints? For pithier and more impassioned commentary, see my rockstar brother's blog: http://saintscompanion.blogspot.com/

General Exam Question One...

2008-04-08T23:15:00.002-05:00

...is done.

And so am I.

I am tired.

The question was hard.

With luck, my answer was adequate.

I don't know for sure though.

And honestly?

I'm kind of afraid to look

at it,

just to be sure.

Surprise Disaster

2008-03-06T12:25:00.004-06:00

I spent all morning (seriously, from 6 to 11 or so) reading for my exams, and tidying up some paperwork. You can't just take general exams. You have to set a date a month in advance and four hierarchs have to sign off on it, and you have to specify your examination areas and all but submit a book list, urine test and fingerprints. So it's kind of a pain. Plus I need to file about 14 forms to get reimbursed for my conference presentation in April, which would be a costly endeavor if I had to bear the price on my own.

So getting out of the house, on a day like today: sunny, breezy, cool and glorious-- even just to run more errands (I need printer ink, and paper, and a jump drive for my dissertation work-- and coin wrappers for my flambeau loot from Mardi Gras)--- was a treat.

I drove for about three minutes before I came on a horrendous wreck just seconds after it happened. A guy in a big sedan plowed into an SUV so hard it flipped the truck over on its side and threw it into the parking lot by the road. A bunch of the early lunch crowd was standing around looking concerned.

I may have mentioned that I'm also a wilderness EMT as well as a grad student. I didn't see anyone out there helping or managing the scene, so I pulled off under the overpass by George's, grabbed the medkit I had just packed for this weekend's paddling trip, and ran back to the site.

Figuring the guy in the sport-ute was in worse shape, I went to him first and got his head stable. He was sprawled on his back in the shattered frame and glass of the passenger side window, feet groping blindly for the broken driver's seat. As I held him stable he grabbed my hand, and when he let go, blood covered my gloves. (Thank you, WMI of NOLS, for stressing BSI!)

Fortunately, as far as I could tell, the blood only came from his hand, which had been cut to ribbons. I did a quick, cursory search for blood elsewhere, but couldn't find any. As I did this, I got him talking. He knew his name, where he was, what time it was,what he had been up to, but couldn't remember the wreck. "Just please tell me I didn't hit nobody," he said. "Tell me I didn't hurt no one. I was just out looking for a job." I told him I hadn't seen the wreck. But judging from the giant dent in the middle of his truck, and the crumpled hood of the sedan, he was on the receiving end of the crash. As I held him there an older woman reached through the window, put a hand on his shoulder and prayed aloud "Help him Lord Jesus. Give this man a chance..."

His pulse was up a bit, but nothing out of the ordinary for something like this. And he wasn't having any trouble breathing, so I stayed there with him talking, keeping him easy and resting, and keeping his spine stable.

EMS got there really fast, thank heaven. It's not like I have any gear that would have made getting him out of the car an easy job-- nor would I ever even have considered attempting it under the circumstances. We're trained to improvise at WMI but only in a wilderness environment. The EMS guys were all over it: quick and efficient and they had him out and loaded up in no time.

This kind of thing has happened to me a lot in the past month or so. I couldn't even go to an Ash Wednesday Mass without having to use these skills. It's disconcerting.

In other disconcerting news: some jerk keyed my car. That's a pointlessly malicious thing to do to anyone-- and to do it to a penniless grad student is way out of bounds. I'm annoyed, but oddly enough not angry. Instead I find myself thinking about how horrible it would be to be the kind of person who derives a sense of joy or power from marring someone else's possessions. (I did call the police and file a report, though I felt a little silly about it. The officer who came out to my place was great about it, though. If there's vandalism going on, they like to be able to see patterns if they can, and reports help them do that.)

But this is all minor. After all, in a moment I'll be on my bike, in the sun, headed for a cup of coffee and a few more hours of, well, reading. Even with all the chaos around these days, I'm feeling weirdly serene.

(About everything but my exams. Those I face with considerable anxiety, fear and trembling But I can live with that...)

Surprise Beauty

2008-03-03T14:27:00.002-06:00

I returned from class today, racing ahead of what looks like is about to be a horrendous rainstorm, laden with care, with anxiety about my reading, my exams, my future, and what do I find?

A sweet olive. Potted. On my very doorstep-- complete with playful rhyming anonymous note.

It's beautiful. And it smells magnificent.

One very pretty mystery...

Turgid Academic Jargon (Though this ain't it)

2008-03-02T22:48:00.004-06:00

I read a lot of it. I read an awful lot of it these days as I prepare for general exams and my prospectus defense next month. But as much as I complain, it's not all bad-- and usually even bad academic writing has the advantage of being provocative enough that it has value as a foil, something to explode and an which to perform the mazurka.

The beauty of it is that from time to time I come across a passage that expresses something, that pinpoints a thought that had been hiding in the recesses of my mind-- something I had been thinking without knowing that I thought it. It's a very nice thing when a perceptive researcher or theorist sets down thoughts that help you clarify your own.

I read one of those passages today while sitting out in front of PJs's with an oversize mug of coffee and Stevie Wonder playing on the iPod. It was in a collection of essays on postmodern ecological thought. Really. Edited Max Oelschlaeger.

But the piece is by Thomas Birch, and it's called "the Incarceration of Wildness":

Wilderness reservations [his term for officially designated wilderness areas] are best viewed as holes, and cracks, as "free spaces" or "liberated zones" in the fabric of domination and self-deception that fuels and shapes out contemporary culture. Working to preserve wild nature, in wilderness reservations or anywhere is primarily...an essential holding action, to stop the complete triumph of the bad faith of our culture...

The general thrust of the piece is that we shouldn't be congratulating ourselves on relegating wildness to officially sanctioned reservations or prisons. However, by leaving these pockets of wildness, the culture exposes itself to a possible real resistance-- a legitimate challenge to society's narrative of bringing law and civilization to every corner of experience. (The reason our culture has to leave these pockets Birch explains by recourse to Baudrillard and Genet--in a very useful analysis I will, mercifully, not reproduce here. It probably interests only me. And other people interested in this theory stuff.)

So here's another Birch quote, to sum up the danger, and the inherent subversive possibility in our captive wilderness zones:

[T]he problem with appropriating wildness by incarcerating it in the prisons of wilderness reservations is that the wildness is still there, and it is still wild, and it does 'speak' to us.

Eustis Brothers Dropping Art...

2008-02-27T14:36:00.003-06:00

..on y'all. Well, one dropping Art; one kind of fumbling hackery in your general direction.

FIRST and most interesting, the ART: you should check out Pitchfork and stream the new Telefon Tel Aviv track. It's called "You Are The Worst Thing in the World." It's gothy, complex. It also, as befits a New Orleans duo, swings a little. In short, it is excellent work. My brother is a genius.

Second, the hackery: I have a long essay in the new issue of Stop Smiling, which you really should be reading all the time, if you're not already. It's about the Hot 8 Brass Band, but it's also about jazz in New Orleans and how it's sustained us and escaped us and inspired us and broken our hearts.

My article is OK, but the issue itself is magic. You get a long interview with Bobby Hutcherson; you get a long, stunning interview with Ornette Coleman; you get a history of Eric Dolphy; you get Steven Heller on jazz album art; you get photography by William Claxton.

It is, in short, very very good. I'm a little awed my work gets to hang out in that sort of company.

The magazine material is not available online for the most part. So put down the keyboard, go to the door, step out into the open air. Walk or bike or if you must drive, then drive to the local bookstore or music store or newsstand. Browse a little. You never know what you might find. Have a conversation or two. Then buy an actual paper copy and take it home and read it. You will like it.

..the wolf behowls the moon...

2008-02-24T12:52:00.007-06:00

Gray wolves in the Northern Rockies lose their protection under the Endangered Species Act next month, 30 days after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service publishes the regulation change. This wasn't a surprise at all-- certain elements (read: ranchers and their political allies) have been pushing for the delisting since at least 2000. It was pretty clear in early 2007 that the wolves' protection would be gone sometime soon. Various wildlife advocacy groups have had their legal challenges to the move prepared for a long time, and went ahead with them this week.

With the removal of protection, people can start hunting gray wolves in the Northern Rockies. (Populations in the southwest and the rest of the lower 48 are unaffected by the delisting.) It's not going to be a wholesale bloodbath: there has to be some pretty serious regulation, which I'll touch on in a bit. But outside of the national parks, the individual states will determine what constitutes a legal wolf hunt.

Some history: by the time the ESA took effect in 1973, we had hunted wolves into near extinction in the lower 48 states. (Though in northern Minnesota they were listed as "threatened" rather than "endangered".) In 1996 a small population of wolves was introduced into Yellowstone-- "reintroduced" really, since they had been there before they had been killed off in such vast numbers. They are native to the Northern Rockies.

By all accounts, the reintroduction has been very successful. According to Fish and Wildlife, there are more than 100 breeding pairs in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, and more than 1,500 wolves in the area in total. The original goal was to establish 30 breeding pairs-- and that was met in 2002. So in this sense it's been successful.

Almost from the outset, however, there have been complaints from ranchers and others that the wolves were dangerous-- and dangerous to their flocks. However they've received (if they wanted) instruction on how to thwart wolf predations, and state funds and private groups like Defenders of Wildlife have compensated ranchers for their losses. Hunters complained that there were less elk and deer to shoot, since they had to share with wolves (though population figures show this is bogus in the extreme.)

Wyoming, Montana and Idaho have committed to ensuring the survival of 15 breeding pairs apiece (in Wyoming's case, 7 of which have to be outside the National Parks), and 150 wolves. So the wolf population can be allowed to be reduced to less than a third of the total wolves living in the area. This makes me nervous. The report on the delisting includes many assurances from ecologists that this far exceeds what's necessary to ensure a viable population-- and I'm no ecologist. I suppose I have to take their word as far as it goes. But I still have some concerns. I think that when it comes to something like this, we're smart to be as cautious as we can be.

First: wolves are really important to their ecosystem. They are top of the chain predators and as such are huge contributors to the health of other populations. As Fish and Wildlife indicates:

wolves support a wide variety of other animals. Ravens, foxes, wolverines, coyotes, bald eagles, and even bears feed on the carcasses of animals killed by wolves. Antelope are swift, elk are alert, and mountain goats are adept at climbing steep cliffs, in part because of the long-term effects of wolf predation. Wolves also help maintain the balance between these ungulates (hoofed animals) and their food supply, making room for other plant-eaters such as beavers and small rodents.

Second: Fifteen hundred wolves is not very many at all. The average population of humans at a Hornets game is routinely five or six times that, and we still call it puny. Then consider that we're talking about population across three huge states: Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. Keep in mind that there used to be more than 200,000 wolves in the lower 48. Also, wildlife groups are right to point out that there's no provision for wolves to be able to connect with packs elsewhere and perpetuate the kind of genetic diversity necessary for them to thrive.

Third: An objection that no-one can do much about. If there are so few wolves that we are having to manage them so closely, then the wolf's recovery hasn't really been the triumph that we trumpet under the ESA. An animal is not just a bundle of genes we have "preserved". It is a cluster of relationships that we curtail through our "management". If we preserve some genetic entity that looks an awful like what we used to call a wolf, but at the same time we work to keep its numbers down, curtail its habitat and restrict its interactions with its environment and other animals, that's not really a wolf we've saved. We're left with a clump of genetics in a cage of greater or lesser size.

Fourth: As a society we tend to slap a value on every damn thing. A dollar value, please. The argument is something like this: "Show me, in actual numbers, why the wolf is valuable enough to save?" Unless we can get people to understand that calculating a being's worth in terms of its value to some other entity is utter absurdity, then species like the wolf always will be vulnerable to having us wipe them out. After all, as raw materials, humans are worth, what forty bucks? So here's a rejoinder to those people: How about you justify your own goddam existence for a change?-- But do it without using any "actual numbers". Find another way-- if you can...

So value. Let's look at value another way, shall we? Here's Cormac McCarthy on wolves from the very beginning of The Crossing:

On a winter's night in that first year he woke to hear wolves in the low hills west of the house and he knew they would be coming out onto the plain in the new snow to run the antelope in the moonlight...Then he saw them coming. Loping and twisting. Dancing. Tunneling their noses in the snow. Loping and running and rising by twos in a standing dance and running on again.

There were seven of them and they passed within twenty feet of where he lay. He could see their almond eyes in the moonlight. He could hear their breath. He could feel the presence of their knowing that was electric in the air. They bunched and nuzzled and licked each other. Then they stopped. They stood with their ears cocked. Some with one forefoot raised to their chest. They were looking at him. He did not breathe. They did not breathe. They stood. Then they turned and quietly trotted on.

In my years of guiding and spending lots of time in the woods in the Northern Rockies, I've had fleeting encounters with wolves. All of them were exciting in just the way McCarthy captures. I can't imagine being the kind of person so blind to that kind of value that they would want to reduce this magnificent creature to a pelt, a pile of meat they don't need, a trophy, a braggy tale for one's coterie. Disgraceful.

Bad at Resting

2008-02-24T12:28:00.003-06:00

When I think about my work ethic, I generally consider myself one lazy mofo. I have a lot to do, true, but fact is I screw around a lot. I do a lot of stuff that falls under Vonnegut's heading of "farting around". I wander around talking to people. I take paddles and bike rides and runs. I take naps. I read books and articles that have nothing to do with my Ph.D. work. I think I'm pretty feckless.

So imagine my surprise when I find out this weekend that I'm really terrible at sitting around. I've been sick for about three weeks now, and Friday was the first day I felt fully human again. I know how easy it is to relapse, so I know I need to take it easy-- just for the weekend-- before I get back into full exercise and activity. After all, I still can't go a full 30 minutes without coughing or blowing my nose. But I'm close.

But it's driving me nuts. I feel good, so I want long bike rides, a long paddle, something! Keeping things easy is making me craaaaazy. I'm anxious. Sitting down to work; getting up again. Looking out the window to convince myself that the weather is nice enough I could handle a 15-20 mile paddle without jeopardizing my health. I am not comfortable with enforced rest. Part of my brain is even trying to convince me that I'm enforcing rest not because I've had the plague, but because I'm just lazy, and my life is slipping away with inactivity and with publishing inane commentary like this. See how this works? Resting sucks.

So I'm going to distract myself with blog posts. Grumble, grumble.

Also, I can feel spring coming on. I feel the urge to start sleeping outside approaching-- like the scent of wildflowers not too far off. I feel the need to start hucking one of my little plastic boats off some whitewater ledges. Badly.

Thank heaven for the North Alabama Whitewater Festival coming up in two weeks or so. If I don't get some whitewater soon, I'm gonna have to start making Molotov cocktails.

Let the appropriate targets (yeah, you know who you are, chumps...) quake and tremble.

Living Hard Will Take its Toll

2008-02-19T08:34:00.005-06:00

My day yesterday went like this:

I. Wake up; wonder if I’m dead, because there’s absolutely no air getting into any of the openings traditionally used for breathing. Briefly panic. Sit up. Feel sinuses drain. Immediately commence coughing fit, the products of which belong in a third-rate horror movie. My skin is on fire.

II. Wish for death. Realize it's not feasible, because I have to teach in two hours. Realize also that I haven’t reviewed the lesson plan I did for this class two weeks ago. Decide to wing it. I also have to collect the students’ first paper (about which, more later).

III. Shower; feel a little better. The weather’s nice. Hey! I’ll bike!

IV. Bike ride to class uses up just about all my reserves of energy. Why does my head weigh so much?

V. Give what must be the most disjointed, surreal lecture on the Faust tale ever in the history of Goethe scholarship. Something about exploding Muppets being cast into Hell. Lead resulting bizarre discussion on Faust’s wager with the Devil. Feel like a bit of a hack. I teach ONE class, and I can’t even manage that properly without turning it into some kind of drug free acid trip prose-poetry experiment. Worse: I hadn’t taken any medicine at all. I alternated between gnomic Timothy Leary spaciness ("Faust wants experience, man. Eternal bliss—he thinks he’s found the way…") and a hopelessly overdone movie-style coughing death scene (Tell Mary-Sue…COUGH, hack hack, wheeze…that I never loved…COUGH…nobody else, and that I… WHEEZE…I’m sorry for all I done…)

VI. Call friend I was supposed to be meeting for coffee after class. I think I can handle maybe another hour before total collapse. Fortunately she’s not getting to the café until much later. We postpone coffee until Wednesday. I bike home. Slowly. Painfully. Relieved.

VII. Collapse on couch by open window. Assume fetal position and commence shivering. Pound vitamin water and orange juice. The weather is really, really nice. If only I could go outside and play. Fall in and out of consciousness. Read about Marxism and ecology. I’m not buying it. But to be fair, my mind has been sharper…

VIII. Pre-processed chicken noodle soup. I’m too tired to make the real stuff, and procuring the ingredients would entail inflicting my presence on the rest of humanity, which is wrong wrong wrong. Dump a tablespoon of cayenne in it. It helps.

IX. Take TheraFlu. Maybe I’ll read for a min…

X. Unconscious.

Today is yet another gorgeous late winter/early spring day. The kind of day that would find me paddling on the lake, going for a long run, biking on one of the trails. Instead I’m going to pad around the house snuffling, garbed as The Dude in robe and v-neck and pajama pants. This is my system telling me to knock off any exertion. My day, much to my annoyance, will be filled with Firefly and Deleuze.

Sweet airs that give delight and hurt not...

2008-02-14T11:15:00.003-06:00

One of the things I liked best about my apartment was the sweet olive growing outside my kitchen window. In weather like this: sunny, cool, breezy, I would open the window, and the one opposite it, leading out on to the street. The wind would carry the smell of sweet olive through my entire place all day and all evening. It was a glorious thing to sit at night with my reading, music playing, with a glass of wine while the scent of sweet olive made my small home into an echo of some Shakespearean bower.

Then the people who bought my apartment from my old landlords cut down all the trees. No more sycamore in front. No more camphor. And no more sweet olive. The new "property managers" explained that the trees were too much maintenance without providing any benefit. There's no arguing with them for two reasons. First, I don't own the place. I have no say. Second: if one is the kind of person who can't recognize the value of sweet olive scent floating through one's apartment on an early spring night, then there's little chance anyone else can demonstrate it either.

I leave this apartment in May, so the scorched-earth types can update the place all they like. It's a shame that in the name of efficiency and modernization and profit they will gut a place that was beautiful in its small way. Places like this are increasingly rare.

Two more things: I keep getting respiratory infections. I have been fully healthy for about 48 hours between the Wednesday before Mardi Gras and today. It's annoying me. Recognizing some telltale signs of bacterial infection (which I won't go into for propriety's sake) I almost started taking one of the Z-Paks I carry for backcountry emergencies. But I held off, and now I'm gradually feeling better. I'm glad I was patient.

Also: my sister caught a basketball from NBA All-Star Game promoters. That is too cool.

Obama in NOLA

2008-02-07T10:53:00.000-06:00

I just returned from Sen. Barack Obama's campaign stop at Fogelman Arena on Tulane's campus. The doors were to open at 7:45 a.m.-- annd there already was a line out the door and around the block. By the time the campaign staff started letting people in, the line stretched down McAlister Drive, out to Willow Street and up the street. After the arena was filled, another 5-600 people stood outside to hear his speech piped out on loudspeakers.

I didn't make it in. No way was I going to stand in that line (though my friend Lee lucked into a spot near the front of the line. No fair.). Instead I took a cool seat in the sun just outside the arena. And the senator came to us out there for about 10 minutes-- thanking us for coming and outlining the remarks he was going to make for the crowd inside.

It was one of those days in New Orleans when you wonder why anyone lives anywhere else-- the sun warm and the sky clear and the air cool. The crowd was a mix of bleary-eyed college students, hyper and chatty high school students, teachers, a couple of medical types, folks in suits. And it was a Benetton ad of a crowd: no one race predominating-- though I would estimate that the age median skewed young.

Sen. Obama's speech was impressive. He spoke about New Orleans, about the failure of the country to see to its rebuilding, about the determination and love and hope of its residents as they set about doing what needs to be done. He made New Orleans a sort of microcosm for the work that needs to be done in the nation-- reducing poverty, improving education, increasing opportunity.

There were specific policy issues in the speech-- appointing a FEMA director with a fixed term, so the director can focus on managing crisis and not on how the crisis will affect a president. He spoke of bonuses for teachers and medical personnel who work in New Orleans and other affected areas, of tax breaks for businesses who locate here.

He promised to fund wetland restoration. And he promised, within two years, that the federal government will fund efforts to build levees designed to withstand 100-year floods and Category V storms. That's not a promise actually to do the job, but hell, it's a start.

There were other things, but I'm sure they will be available elsewhere. I didn't take a notebook, or a camera, or my recorder. Just wanted to go sit in the sun and listen. And don't think I'm dazzled by the array of campaign promises. I'm just pleasantly surprised that a candidate decided to speak about these issues. I'll be disappointed if they don't happen, but I have no illusions; I'm just glad they're getting mention-- even for a day.

Politicians always pander. It's just pleasant when they're pandering to me. Addressing the issues I consider mine.

The senator also took a swipe at those who call his message "naive", that he "talk[ed] about hope too much. That [he's] a 'hope-monger'," Hope, he said, gave people the dedication to win the U.S. Revolution against overwhelming odds, the determination to free the slaves and save the union, the courage to risk their lives fighting for civil rights. In short, he said, hope is nothing to belittle.

I don't know how this is going to play nationwide. He was very NOLA-centric-- for that reason I loved it. But I'm not sure the message will resonate elsewhere (though, of course, I hope it does).

Here's a link to the text of the speech.

Even better, here's the video.

Carnival

2008-02-05T19:34:00.000-06:00

So I didn't get to ride this year, due to a combination of weather, police jitters and krewe tradition. No seeing New Orleans from a float, no tossing trinkets to the crowd. I missed it.

But I got to do something I enjoyed even more. I got to tote one of the flambeaux in Proteus Monday night. It's a totally different experience from riding in a parade, Being ground level with the crowd is an enormous rush. They cheer you, shout for you, throw you-- and hand you-- money when you do it right.

In an indication of post-Katrina demographics, the crew carrying the lights was about 50 percent black men, old hands from the neighborhoods, and 50 percent white ex-prep school guys like me. There were plenty of flambeaux that didn't get carried. We filled in because we could, and the krewe could use us.

So how did it go? Imagine a series of sprint intervals over a little more than three miles. Carrying a top-heavy 40-pound torch. With a bandanna tied around your nose so you filter out the mineral spirits fumes, but can't get a real breath of clean air.

You sweat and you sway and dance, and you spin your lights wildly and the crowd cheers some more, and a group of Tulane coeds mobs you so they can grind on you in the street while their friends shoot footage to shock and amaze their friends back in California or New Jersey or Delaware or someplace where such an act might actually be scandalous.

If you do the thing right a group of ladies under the overpass before Lee Circle as you pass might say something like: "There's a white boy who can shake it-- look at his pockets full a money!" And an old man or two in a baseball cap bearing the name of the naval vessel he served on 50 years ago might come up to you to wish you Happy Mardi Gras and smile grandly and hand you a crumpled dollar.

And your friends-- and some of the students you teach and some of the grad students you study with might do a double take, shout in amazement, and cheer like Early Doucet just caught the winning touchdown.

It's something else.

It is ridiculously hard work. No lie. I'm still trying to replenish fluids. And not even with booze. One of the guys I was walking with bonked pretty bad. He was out of energy, out of fluid. Out of it altogether. But during the walk he never stopped dancing the whole way.

I didn't mask today. I didn't need to. All the wildness and silliness and freedom that come from being masked, from being someone else entirely-- I got that out Monday night when I "toted the fire."

Homeless in NOLA

2008-02-02T09:17:00.000-06:00

The homeless? That enormous favela encampment under the bridge at Claiborne? The one that breaks my heart every time I pass it, that makes me wish I were as wealthy as I will never be just so I can feed them all for a week?

Those homeless?

They don't exist. Bill O'Reilly said so on Fox.

He said it because he was challenging a statement John Edwards made in his speech announcing he would withdraw from the presidential campaign-- that he had just come from visiting a group of homeless people living under a bridge here. O'Reilly said he and his people couldn't find the homeless Edwards claimed to have visited. If Edwards would just confirm their existence, he said, he would run right out an help them.

But Keith Olbermann found them. And he was NOT amused:

"Listen up, O'Reilly, you self-serving, self-inflating, uninformed buffoon...Get your sorry ass to Claiborne at Canal and put your money where your bottomless pit of a mouth is."

Here's the link. Start at 1:25 or so.

Oh, and just to be fair-- just so you can see for yourself what O'Reilly said, here's a link to that clip too.

Take a Dramamine before you watch it.

I'm Just Sayin'...

2008-02-01T07:35:00.000-06:00

No need to draw any conclusions from this or anything.

Really.

Here goes:

Exxon shatters all-time profit record

Those guys must really be awesome businessmen.

The BEST. Ever.

I mean, to do so well-- to make so much money-- in such a volatile market...

Ah, well...

2008-01-31T14:59:00.001-06:00

Chaos doesn't roll tonight. And it won't reschedule. Chaos is like that. We don't like tagging on to other krewes' nights. Too much commotion.

In any case, in the eyes of some elements the parade is peripheral to other activities. And most of those members are booked every night from now until Tuesday midnight. Most of them just don't have the schedule space to roll another night.

And Chaos don't do daytime.

So instead many of them will spend today sitting around some unnamed club and drinking themselves into gleeful cheer before some unnamed ball that has no affiliation at all with Chaos...

It's a drag, really. As one of my friends says: "Chaos always brings the dark funny." And this year we did. Big. It would have been good fun. As it is, I snagged the krewe cards off the float this afternoon-- maybe I'll post pictures of the drawings later on if I get ambitious. The floats, by Royal Artists, are spectacular as always.

But at least my rockstar brother and I got to have a great, leisurely lunch at Casamento's. And, OK, I can work on some of my reading for generals. I'm a nerd.

Also, if you go to my Flickr site, I posted a very few shots of the den when we visited last weekend. You can get sort of an idea of what it might have looked like. Sigh. There's some other random new stuff up there too. I haven't been good on the photography.

Some more things (in brief)

2008-01-29T23:12:00.000-06:00

First: I've posted some long overdue pictures from this month. Some from Krewe du Vieux. Some from the first race of my uncle and cousin's horse, some from random places. It was a busy time, and I didn't upload everything I shot-- and I didn't take pictures everywhere I should have. But they're now up on my flickr site. There will be more after Mardi Gras.

Speaking of which: Somebody you know will be riding in Chaos this year, with his brother in law and his brother (my father is taking a year off, for very obvious reasons). The parade looks good, as always. Classic. Lots of equal opportunity satire at targets who deserve the heat. It's going to be fun. The float I'm on is the only non-satirical one, but it's one I have a soft spot for, for reasons that will become obvious when it is seen. Float 15. Last float in the parade. Last guy. Neutral ground. Other side will be my brother.

Last, and I'm burying this not for any lack of enthusiasm, but because I'm bucking the tendency I notice among many of my friends and colleagues (no, not you, of course-- those other guys...) to make politics the end-all of a relationship, the determination of whether one is a good person, and the only important factor in determining any damn thing.

I dislike that tendency, and I think culture and private life should come first, hence, my emphasis on Carnival, to which I will be paying vastly more attention than to the Feb. 5 primaries. ('Fraid I won't be joining in the Super Bowl orgy of couch-sitting and crap-eating either. There's a parade on you know, old man...).

That said, after some wishywashiness and second guessing and wishful thinking, I'm prepared to go public with my support for Barack Obama. I'm not going to go into the 9 million policy reasons. He has stances, specific ones, and I agree with them. Most of them. I don't agree with him on the war in Iraq, but I think his options are going to be more limited there than he imagines, for better or worse. But on the environment, on technology, on poverty, homeland security, immigration-- and a host of other issues, I think he has the right idea.

I don't think he's the Second Coming; I don't think he's some political Messiah. I don't doubt that he will screw up, and that people will point it out-- whether on the campaign trail or in office.

I do think, however, that he's capable of making us proud of our president again. I think his intentions are good, his mind is sharp, and his ability to motivate a hugely disparate group of people is nothing short of uncanny. Any candidate who can march under the utterly earnest banners of "change" and "hope" and not have me smirking ironically-- instead has me nodding-- is on to something.

After viewing the carousel of tired old retreads mouthing the same old platitudes and taking the same cheapshot rabbit punches at each other, I think it's time to give someone very new and different a shot. Campaign reform? He's taken no money from lobbyists or PACs. None. Experience? Sen. Obama has more time as an elected official than Sen. Clinton has-- and she touts her experience as a selling point. (That is, unless you count her time as a presidential wife as actual experience?)

The presidency isn't a hereditary office in this country-- not yet. I think it's time to remind certain elements of that. For me, Obama is a choice that shows a little faith in the better angels of our nature. As a candidate, as an official, he might make us want to be a little better than we are, rather than telling us that what we are is the greatest thing ever-- and shut up (or, and here's $50!).

Now, specific policy stuff you can bring up with me in person. Do not bother attempting to fight with me about it here. I won't take the bait. I won't.

But by the way, if the Republicans actually nominate McCain, they will have gone a long way to bringing sanity, skill and some intelligence to the office. He's been right on immigration, torture and a host of other issues (not campaign finance, but whatever). He might actually be more liberal than Clinton. If it comes down to the two of them, I likely would vote for him.

Mo-lay...

2008-01-23T20:44:00.000-06:00

... is how Bender pronounces it in The Breakfast Club, before Claire corrects him ("mol-yaire..."), and the Geek Brian pipes up (Oo! I love his work) and Bender chucks the rest of the text at him. (Bonus points if you can describe what "Molay" does for Bender...)

But get this: I assigned Molière's: L'ecole des femmes for the World Literature class I'm teaching at LSU. It's the second work we've started since the semester started (the first was Book IX of Milton's Paradise Lost).

So they have to read the play for Friday. Keep in mind that I have done my best to make this class a challenge. There's a lot of reading, a lot of putting people on the spot, and a lot of critical rigor (as much as possible for a 2-3 year class).

I didn't expect them to like Milton, but everyone did the reading and seemed to like the work.

But this Molière, he's French. He's old. He's in translation. The translation is in rhyming couplets. There's no way the class is going to like this guy.

Then I get this note this afternoon:

Molière provided some good laughs on a shit day... Thanks for the read.

I thought this was LSU! Beer! Sports! Goofing off! Certainly not reading 17th Century drama when Mardi Gras is less than two weeks away!

And yet, the student likes it enough to email me about it. Long before the work is due. Thanking me! for an assignment!

I mean: OK, the play is great-- and legitimately funny, but I have to say we're breeding an odd crop of (dare I say it?) scholars at LSU these days...

And Another Thing...

2008-01-21T19:19:00.000-06:00

I wrote about a week ago how many people in the U.S. seem to be happy to accuse New Orleanians of sitting on their butts, wallowing in misery, playing up their pain and their loss for the benefit of the cameras, just to squeeze every last cent out of their deserving, upright neighbors to the north.

So here's a video for you.

This is what it looks like when we New Orleanians wallow in pain and loss. This is what it looks like when we wallow in bathos-- when we "play up our poverty and misfortune to scam the rest of the nation."

Here is a bit of what many residents of the rest of the "safe" United States sometimes seem to have trouble grasping: how sweet life can be, and how beautiful people can be, even when times are hard.

Belated Albums of 2007

2008-01-21T15:25:00.000-06:00

This was a weird year. The albums that my brain tells me were the best, the most innovative, the most interesting, the ones that will have influence and that will still be listened to ten years from now--- are not necessarily the ones I listened to the most.

My music listening faculty and my brain are at a sort of disconnect. This bothered me to begin with. But now I'm OK with it.

Here's my list. And my inevitable commentary:

Josh Ritter: The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter. "The Temptation of Adam" is arguably the best song I heard this year. The album ranges from Dylan to Paul Simon to the Beatles to god knows how many other influences-- but never seems stale. I've like Ritter's work for a while, and I still can't stop listening to this album.

Arcade Fire: Neon Bible. There's a lot of the Boss in this album ("Antichrist Television Blues" could have been written by Springsteen in the 80s). This is an album that will endure.

The National: Boxer. I really don't know what to do with this album. Sometimes I think of Leonard Cohen. Sometimes I think of Joy Division. Sometimes I think of Tom Waits. But it's really none of those. I don't know why I like it so much, and why I can't stop listening to it. Someday, someone will figure out what these guys are up to.

Ted Leo & The Pharmacists: Living With the Living. Terrible album art, I agree with many of the critics on this one. But the music is amazing. TL and his band are as angry and cutting and wry as they've ever been (see "Bomb, Repeat, Bomb"), and the machine gun barrage of percussion and guitar hit so hard it's easy to miss just how catchy and even beautiful his melodies can be.

Steve Earle: Washington Square Serenade. This is Earle's "acoustic" album. Some critics have said he sounds a little less angry, a little less tortured and political. I'm not so sure. I think people have finally caught up to Earle. The technical skill, and the darkness we've come to expect are all still there ("Oxycontin Blues"), but the album also includes one of the prettiest songs about married love in years("Days Aren't Long Enough," a duet with Earle's wife, Allison Moorer. My sister Molly gave me this album, which somehow I had missed (I've liked Earle for a long, long time, to the annoyance of some of my friends). She gets HUGE credit for making sure I caught up.

Terence Blanchard: A Tale of God's Will. As beautiful as this album is, it's hard for me to listen to it. From the opening track, which echoes the chants of the Mardi Gras Indians and medieval pleas for divine mercy, to the compositions Blanchard composed on returning to the desolation of New Orleans, this is powerful, powerful material. Some of it was included in Spike Lee's masterly When the Levees Broke. Those portions alone make it worth the purchase. The remainder makes it indispensable for people who care about New Orleans and the aftermath of the federal floods.

Wilco: Sky Blue Sky. I love Wilco when they go all country on me. This collection reminds me of A.M., which I bought at Wuxtry in Athens, Ga. in 1995. Later that year I saw them open for The Jayhawks at the 40 Watt. I used to like the Jayhawks a lot, too. And the show-- particularly the encore, which they played together-- remains one of the best I've seen. I am an official old-timer.

MC Solaar: Mach 6. OK. So I like French hip hop. I can't believe it either. And anyway, I don't like ALL of it. But I played this all summer when I was working out West. "Guérilla" is the kind of song I wished my French were good enough to allow me to shout along to as I drove through Idaho. As it was, I just had to make do with nodding along with the beat and the horns. And "Jumelles" is the best song about seducing a librarian I have ever heard. But, God, that album cover. It's just so damn French...

Elliott Smith: New Moon. I was worried about this double album, which I reviewed earlier in the year over at Athens Exchange. I was surprised on my first listen how strong it was. And on my twelfth. It reminded me how much I love Smith's singing and songwriting, how he could make addiction, heartache and pain sound so beautiful. I was also surprised at how sad I still am about Smith's death. Buckley, Cobain: my reaction to their death pales beside how bummed I was when I heard Elliott Smith would never sing another word.

Herbie Hancock: River. Joni Mitchell's songwriting. Hancock's jazz arranging genius. This is not some watered-down poppy jazz album to stream at a murmur at Starbucks. This is serious, sometimes workmanlike, sometimes inspired jazz. Sometimes with guest vocals and sometimes not. Hancock deconstructs songs and puts them together again even better than before.

Here are the "just misses" in no particular order: Ryan Adams, Easy Tiger; Preservation Hall Jazz Band's The Hurricane Sessions (especially their cover with Clint Maedgen of The Kinks' "Complicated Life"), Feist, The Reminder (loved "1-2-3-4" until Goddam Apple played it ALL GOT-DAMN DAY LONG FOR EIGHT MONTHS. Still like the rest of the album an awful lot.); Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, 100 Days, 100 Nights. (If you ever wanted to be alive during the heyday of Stax Records, here's your chance to pretend.);Voxtrot, Voxtrot (lots and lots of catchy hooks. This band's next will be brilliant, I'm certain); Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
(an album as good as the title is dumb); New Pornographers, Challengers (I like everything Neko Case records, really. She only gets better.)

A final note: one of the albums I listened as much as or more than all the others is the Hot 8 Brass Band's recording from the 2007 JazzFest. Sure, it's not perfect. I was recorded live, after all. With a new snare. And a lot of guest musicians. But it's really, really good-- and the tracks "Ray Nagin" and "Let Me Do My Thing" are true classics. It's even available at iTunes.

Sigh.

2008-01-14T21:58:00.001-06:00

Every time I think the rest of the nation really is OK with New Orleans, that it likes us, values us, wants to keep it around, something comes up to remind me that lots of people in this country really don't like us at all.

Really, that part is OK with me. Lots of people don't like jazz, think Mardi Gras is kind of a hassle, the JazzFest is too expensive, and the French Quarter just a geographical license to act like an ass (though to be fair, it's tourists who go there to do that. New Orleanians usually are reduced to the role of slightly embarrassed tour guides.)

Lots of those people live outside of the city; some of them even live here. I don't agree with them, but I'm not about to argue someone into liking, say, The Soul Rebels. I'm cool with people who are injured in the taste buds, who dig beige stucco everywhere, and chain stores and strip malls, and housing covenants and bland, poisonous food, and early hours and bogus computer produced music. It's fine, really.

I'll tweak those people for it, but I don't think they're evil.

But lots of people, it seems, think that the values that the City of New Orleans represents are something horrible. That the city is just a big stinking pile of garbage that the country is better off without. It used to make me mad, but now it just saddens me, really, to know there are so many people out there who wish us harm, who despise us, think we're all dishonest, thieving fools.

I honestly don't know what sparks it. Maybe there's some racism. I don't know for sure.vI suspect it's simply the enormous historical disdain this nation has for poor people. And this country especially hates poor people who somehow find a way to enjoy themselves.

In this country we ceaselessly drum the myth that the poor are to blame for their poverty. They're lazy or stupid or criminal or all three, in the usual construction. It's convenient, because it allows us to step over them as we're pulling ourselves up by their bootstraps. It allows us to demonize the poor-- to push them as far away from us-- physically and psychologically-- as we can, so that we can feel that it would never happen to us. We're too smart. Too industrious. And those are the remedy for everything. Because the poor, the dispossessed need help, they are despised for it. They despise us for our weakness.

Some of the people who hate New Orleans hate vice. Some of them, certainly, hate black people (all the praise of the good white folks in California who don't ask for aid after fires is a screaming giveaway). Some of them hate the idea that someone, somewhere is having a good time for no good reason at all--- maybe it's 3 p.m on a Wednesday and you have a poboy and a couple of beers to share with someone.

But I suspect that at root of it all of them just hate the poor. And it's not enough to hate them. They want to categorize them as trash, excrement, detritus, less than human, less than animal.

It's frankly frightening. I dislike the crass materialism and grasping soullessness of much of the rest of this nation. But I don't wish anyone who lives there harm. I don't despise them for living in places that reflect their values, that allow them to live as they live and pursue the kind of existence that enables them to be happy. When they need help, I give it. I recognize them as my brothers.

I wish the rest of the nation would just let us go. I don't have any illusions we'd run things any better, but we could hardly do any worse. Then the haters could hate from afar, and we could go about our beautiful disfunctional existence on our own.

What brought this on? Some guy posting somewhere about what a sewer New Orleans is. A long list of comments wishing death and destruction on us because we're too expensive to save. Too needy. Too loud in our pleas for help. I'm not going to link to the site, because I don't want my meagre readership to increase his from here. Directly anyway.

Instead, visit Dr. Morris's site. His reaction was a touch more-- ahem-- vitriolic. And you'll find a link to the site there.

Long Beach Playa!

2008-01-14T17:39:00.000-06:00

I just received word that my proposal has been accepted to the American Comparative Literature Association. I was going to be discussing Wesley Powell and the Wilderness, but I'm going to change the focus a bit to treat accounts by early Latin American explorers. Should be great fun.

That is, for a conference. Normally conferences can be kind of a drag-- held in cold or boring places and chock full of nonsense panels. This one is different. Instead of panels, there is a series of seminars around shared topics. Much more interactive.

And best of all: the conference is in Long Beach. In April. And I have funding. Plenty of funding.

@#$% yeah.

Maybe the kayak goes. (Yes, that's the new one. Beauty.)

Maybe the surfboard. ('Cuz I'm at least as good as this guy. Really.)

Maybe both.

Oh yeah-- and I guess I might do some work at the conference too...

OK. Break's Over...

2008-01-13T22:30:00.001-06:00

... Everyone back on your head.

I'm getting back into my routine, starting tomorrow morning. I teach World Literature: 1650-- Present, Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning. I have 40 students enrolled. We're jammed up. I'm going to scare as many of them away as I can, with dire warnings of tons of difficult reading of the world's literary heavyweights. But really, the class is very manageable, and the syllabus is terrific. If all goes well, the students will enjoy the class, while actually learning a thing or two. Two days of introduction, more or less, and diving into Milton's work on Friday.

I did some writing over the holidays-- for buddy's website in Athens, GA, and for American Lawyer Media, the company that owns my old newspaper. This is the fascinating trademark piece of which I wrote an entry or two ago. Here's the link.

There's other publishing news as well. My Stop Smiling piece on the Hot 8 is out this month. It's an OK piece, but a great magazine. You should be reading it already.

And there's even more publishing news, but I'll hold on to it for a while. I can always use material.

By Friday I will be admirably routinized. Just in time to get in a paddle on Saturday and catch Krewe du Vieux Saturday.

The picture comes from my reporting day before the BCS last week. (No reference to Ohioans this time, Adelaide...) I included the shot because my journal has been art-deficient recently, and needed some kind of visual to perk things up.

"One John Wayne Dude" on NOLA

2008-01-08T23:47:00.001-06:00

You really should read this piece in the Times Pic about Lt. Gen. Russel Honore. He's leaving the military. And he has a bit of disdain for the nation's response to the storms and subsequent federal flood. The link is here.

It's a very nice piece. And it was written by the AP's Greg Bluestein, who briefly was a colleague of mine at the Daily Report in Atlanta. He went to the AP; I went, well, out west. And back to school. Or something. (Incidentally, in tomorrow's Daily Report I have a very gripping story about the trademark licensing enforcers who bust bootleggers at big sporting events. Fascinating.) Greg's a heck of a reporter. The FCDR tends to attract them-- or launch them. (A note: I don't include me. I'm too feckless to be worth much as a daily beat reporter. It's a demanding grind of a job.)

Here's a bit of what to expect from his profile piece:

"There's an attitude everywhere else that people are smarter than they are in New Orleans and in Mississippi. They're not," Honore, 60, said at his office at Fort Gillem outside Atlanta. "What happened in New Orleans could have happened anywhere on the eastern seaboard."

Still in Houston. News on that front later, but my father is doing as well as can be expected. Which means he was well enough to stay up late watching LSU lay the smack down on the chickenshit Ohioans.

A Quick Post...

2008-01-07T08:24:00.000-06:00

...because I'm on my way out the door to Houston, where I'm going to spend a day or two hanging out with my favorite convalescent. I have all kinds of things to post, including albums of 2007, some photos from the first race of Cutty Spark, my uncle and cousin's racehorse, the Sugar Bowl, and some other stuff too. I've been a little busy slapping articles together for my old newspaper in Atlanta, and for a buddy's website in Athens, Ga..

Tight have been the deadlines, so I haven't had much time to post.

I should mention, however, that in addition to driving, my only other activity today will be watching the BCS Championship game. I know there's criticism about the teams, that some people with rather weak arguments think their favorite team should be there. Whatever.

All I care about is that the Tigers demolish Ohio State in the Dome tonight. We can leave the commentators to question and pick at the result. I don't want a close game. I want a "boring" blowout. We've had quite enough excitement this year in LSU's schedule, thankyouverymuch.

So I want some "chickenshit Ohioan" (Walker Percy's words, not mine) carnage on the turf tonight. And I don't want it ever in doubt. Geaux tigers.

That is the extent of my football excitement. It doesn't rank with others in this region (just remember what happened when I had to fail a football player before the Sugar Bowl last year). But there it is.

Holiday Flying with AirTran

2007-12-21T11:11:00.000-06:00

I had two AirTran flights in a week—up to Boston and back. Both sucked. I've told you about the flight up-- flights canceled without warning, delays, incomprehensible secret changings of gate.

But the flight back was even worse.

I arrived at Logan at 6:30 a.m.-- for an 8:30 a.m. flight. A domestic flight (well, to New Orleans, but still...). I had to check a bag, because I had my pocketknife, and I didn't want it taken away. I stood in line from 6:30 until 7:55, waiting for the half-wit and the parolee behind the counter to find their own asses and begin checking people in. I had one bag. I even used the little monitor to get a boarding pass. It still took nearly 90 minutes to get properly checked in.

Then I hit the security gate. As I took my place in a city-block size line, two TSA guards—retirement age women with whiskey--cured voices and clothes that smelled of damp cigarette smoke-- had the following conversation:

“Tommy says all these people are for the 8:30 flights.”
“Oh yeah? Geez. They’ll never make it.”
“I know. Not like it’s our job to get ‘em to the gates any faster. What airline?”
“AirTran.”
“Well then they should send a representative or something. All these people are going to miss their plane.”
“I know. Hey, get Jessica over here, so we can go on break. I need a cigarette. It’s been an hour…”

At that point I called AirTran. I could only get a reservation agent—no generalized customer service option appeared in their voice mail tree. I had this conversation (somewhat edited to avoid all my tedious flight information):

“Hello?”
“Hi. I don’t know if you can help me, but I’m standing in the security line at Logan. I got here at 6:30 for an 8:30 flight, but your desk agents didn’t get me checked in until 7:55. Now it doesn’t look like I’m going to get through security in time to make my flight.”
“Oh. I’m very sorry sir.”
“I should add that I was just about first in line to check in. I have no idea how many people are after me. But they’re missing their flight too. Isn’t there anything you can do?”
“Well, sir, we can’t really do anything about that here. Have you—”
“Can’t someone get in touch with your people here and get a representative down here to hustle people through?”
“I’m afraid not, sir. All I can do is handle reservations. You could call TSA, though, yourself.”
“They’re standing right here. I’m in the security line.”
“Oh.”
“Isn’t there anything you can do? Y’all are about to have a riot on your hands.”
“I can put you on the standby list for the first flight after yours. It would still get you into Atlanta in time to make your connection.”
“(Sigh). Fine.”

I dashed through the security line, where the TSA thugs confiscated a bottle of olive oil I forgot to check. (It was from a farm in Palestine—a wedding gift to guests from Maria and Johnny. I was looking forward to trying it. Sigh again. Not to mention I’m probably on the watch list now.)

I raced for the gate, clutching shoes and belt—no time to put them on. I flashed the boarding pass at the gate agent and sprinted on board. It was 8:26. I stashed my one bag, and was putting my belt on when a guy dashed in behind me.

“There’s going to be a riot out there,” he said. “They’re trying to close the door, and all those people are missing the flight. Even the police is out there trying to make them open the door, but the AirTran guy was refusing to open. He said the plane had to go.”

Empty flight. Until Baltimore. Where I had a middle seat between two big folks, and where the crew found some kind of electromechanical error shortly after we pushed away from the gate. WHich required sitting there, seatbelts fastened, for 30 minutes extra.

But suddenly all that just seems like overkill. The flight sucked. Scary. Inconvenient. Incompetent. Miserable service.

Nicely done AirTran. I fly your airline because I am a graduate student. Cheap is not one option among many for me. It is the ONLY option. But I may have to find a way to spend a couple extra dollars to fly some other service next time. Both flights north and back were models of lousy ground service (service in flight actually was very nice), and incompetent logistics.

I'd rather walk or bike (but I guess that kind of goes without saying anyway...)

"I wish I don't live here..."

2007-12-20T12:10:00.000-06:00

That's one of the first things I heard out of the mouth of a local when I returned to New Orleans yesterday. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'm back from a week in Boston and New York, relying on the hospitality of my friends Adelaide and Mark in Boston and of my sister in New York. I flew into Boston in, well, a blizzard/ice storm hybrid, dodging two canceled flights and three or four avowals that there was no way I was getting into Logan that night. I did. Late, but I got there. And I helped my mother's student-- a French horn player from Costa Rica-- make his flights as well. Good deeds done.

The visit to Boston always reminds me (with no little surprise) that cities, well-planned and reasonably well-governed, can work. That is, they can function as prosperous, convenient, easy, safe, exciting places to live. Time in Baton Rouge and New Orleans can leave one with a decided anti-city prejudice (to which I am prone anyway, gentle, pastoral druid that I am becoming in my declining years...)

And the time in New York reminded me how fun and exciting living there must be. The play Molly had been managing, "T'ings Dey Happen", really was remarkable. The single actor took on the characters of about a dozen people in Nigeria, and rather than seeming gimmicky, it captured the cacophony of voices that make the place such a heartbreaking chaos. Beautiful.

There were drinks with Tom and Karen, brunch with Maria and Johnny (whose Astoria house I love) and Kelly and Sofia, and I even (at Maria's urging) crashed a Christmas party at my friend Caroline and her fiance's apartment. I had forgotten how many friends I have in NYC. And getting to spend some non-rushed time with Molly is always amazing. When she was sick earlier this year, she and I were at the house in New Orleans together for several weeks, and it was great to be together in a day to day, unhurried, sense.

The Acela train between Boston and NYC, by the way, is great fun. Fast, and comfortable even when crowded. The flights, not so much. I'll write about them in another post.

But after much travail, I finally found myself standing on the neutral ground outside of baggage claim at Armstrong, wating for my father too fight through miles of traffic to pick me up. As I waited, a greying Asian guy pulled up in a white Tundra. He turned off the engine and ran across the street to baggage claim. He was in an area where we are not supposed to park-- much less leave a vehicle unattended.

Not 45 seconds after the driver dashed off, an airport cop: balding, bored, came up to the truck and then turned his beady eyes on me.

"Not my truck," I said before he could start with me.

"Neither me," said the woman standing about 10 feet away, clicking her tongue and shaking her head.

The cop seethed. And scanned the area just as the driver ran back, carrying a giant black suitcase and a sealed cardboard box. The cop accosted him. I couldn't hear what he said, but the driver was pissed. He chucked the case and the box in his truck bed, dashed back across the street and collected an elderly woman who walked with a cane.

"I wish I don't live here," he said, after catching (my now-sympathetic) eye. "It's too hard." He shut the passenger door, and wiped his hands on his cargo pants. "TOO HARD!" he shouted at the cop as he got in the truck and drove off.

Another Trip

2007-12-12T18:49:00.000-06:00

Yes, another trip. Not to the Northern Rockies or Costa Rica or the Northern Pacific or anyplace like that.

Not to the Grand Canyon (@#$%!!!).

In fact, I guess you could couch my next trip in terms of being the anti-wilderness. I am going to Boston and then New York. Boston tomorrow and Friday. To the city on the train on Saturday, back to Boston on Monday and back to NOLA a week from today.

I am going from 83 F to a high of something like 35. So I'm having to find some clothes. Mostly the stuff I wear in the mountains in the summer.

I'm going to hang with friends and see my sister's show and generally mill about in cities the way I typically mill about in the woods. It should be really fun.

I might even write something about it when I get back.

Sigh.

2007-12-10T09:18:00.000-06:00

I am not going to the Grand Canyon this January. I got one of the private boater permits in the supplementary lottery, but my immovable launch date is for Jan. 14-- the first day of classes at LSU, and the trip plus staging days and travel would have taken 16 or seventeen days. I found out on Wednesday of last week, and had until today to make my decision and put a $400 deposit with the National Park Service to reserve the date. Instead I called and opted out.

It's not that I couldn't have done the trip. I could have found a person (or people, most likely) to cover my class for the first six or seven classes. My paddling cronies east and west would have moved quickly enough to assemble a credible trip-- complete with raft support. We would have had to rush, but we could have done it-- and it would have been amazing fun.

I'm deciding against going because I committed to teach a World Literature course-- and the first three weeks of the semester are pretty important, and I should be there, and it's too much to ask others to cover for me. One of the nice things about being in school is that I trade income for time-- lots of it. I get a bunch in the summer (when I go to work as a guide) and in the winter, and from time to time throughout the semester. There aren't a lot of demands on me as long as I get my work done. The only demand is that I show up a couple of times a week, for a few months out of the year, to teach. The students (I know from my own experience) would probably prefer that I didn't show up, but being there is, after all, my job. I can meet this one, small, obligation-- that simply appears at the worst possible time.

My decision makes me feel a little like I found one of Wonka's Golden Tickets, but I'm passing up the factory tour because I have school. I'm exactly the kind of tedious adult bore that Dahl would have mocked-- and rightly so.

But it's maybe not the best analogy. There will be other chances-- albeit small ones-- to get another permit. My friends will have a chance to get a permit on their applications, and presumably will ask me along if one comes through. So in a sense, this is a little victory for Hope-- the hope that there will be another chance to go, that it will come before I'm too old to be able to enjoy the trip, and that it will come at a time when I don't have to ask others to sacrifice their time and energy so I can satisfy my own wants.

Or so I keep telling myself.

Compass Contoversy

2007-12-07T09:44:00.000-06:00

I don't know what proportion of U.S. Catholicism Bill Donohue's Catholic League represents, but it makes an awful lot of noise about things that really are peripheral to the central questions of faith and religious practice in this country. The League seems, in particular, to have a major problem with art of any kind that might challenge the Magisterium.

Oops. Did I use that word? Because that's the name of the evil church in Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass-- the latest target of Catholic League ire. (And of various shouts of peckerwood outrage from the usual Christian suspects.)

Here's the deal. Donohue doesn't want children seeing the movies, because then , horror of horrors, they might read the books. And the books are much more serious godless work than anything Hollywood might feel comfortable putting out. I haven't seen the movie, and probably won't. I suspect the movie will disappoint me (though it's superbly cast). But I read the three books, and liked them a lot. (The reference is to Milton's Paradise Lost (!!) What a terrible thing...)

OK. So Pullman's an avowed, intelligent, outspoken atheist. It's possible he was "of God's party without knowing it" (to tweak Blake's description of Milton). The Church depicted in The Golden Compass bears only a passing resemblance to The Catholic Church at its very worst historical moments (which even the most faithful Catholics cannot deny the Church has had. Two thousand years of history is a lot of time to make some pretty horrific mistakes.) That said, the outcry from certain ultra-Catholic quarters seems to be accusing itself.

That is: by objecting to the movie, these guys are accepting the book’s portrayal as accurate enough to identify the Church. I don’t see it. That’s not my Catholicism that Pullman has written about. No one that I recognize, anyway. If Bill Donohue of the “Catholic League” sees Pullman’s portrayal as accurate, then how can he justify such a malicious creed? If, on the other hand, the portrayal bears no resemblance to the true Church, then what is he so worked up about?

Pullman has never denied his atheism, though the movie has toned down what some have considered some of the books’ overtly atheistic stance. However, despite Pullman’s avowed opposition to “God”, he seems to be unaware of the spiritual—even the theological ramifications of his novels. I place his “God” in quotation marks, by the way, because his “God” isn’t really God at all. He shoots down the kind of false god that could create the kind of church his work portrays. In a sense the novel’s church creates the kind of god it deserves.

But there is a sort of religion in Pullman’s novels (though the author himself might deny it), and it has a great deal to do with the kind of reverence for all life espoused by Francis of Assisi, and with an enormous sense of pity for humanity and its flawed nature, its ultimate fate. This is part of Catholicism as I have perceived it, and as I have known it since I was a child—an awe and respect for life, coupled with deep pity and identification with the flawed and the failed. And a world-weary understanding of sin, which forgives it even while it refuses to justify it. I’m a lousy, lousy, Catholic, don’t misunderstand me. I just barely qualify for the name. But no-one expects perfection, after all. Which is nice.

It’s OK for Christian groups to go nuts for Narnia and batshit over Mel Gibson’s homo-masochistic fantasy sequence in The Passion of the Christ, evidently (the latter paean to violence has to be much more disturbing than anything “Compass” can dredge up.) But God forbid (literally) that any popular art—hell, any art at all—be produced from a standpoint not explicitly Christian.

That said: I haven’t seen this movie. I’m sure the most challenging aspects of the novel are going to be toned down (and there are some moments and sequences that could be harrowing in a movie). I’m pretty sure it will be better than “Bella”, which all the Christian groups are pushing for its facile pro-life message and bombastic Christian allusions. Haven't seen that one either. But friends and family have, and they have hated it.

Just keep in mind: The Golden Compass has a cute polar bear. In armor. Bloostained armor. And when he kills his enemy he rips out his heart and eats it raw before a crowd of onlookers. In the book anyway. But that, people, is CINEMA.

John Wesley Powell I am Not, But Still...

2007-12-06T12:09:00.000-06:00

Get this: if you're a boater-- I mean a real boater, not someone who hires raft guides-- it's next to impossible to get on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. To do it, you have to get a permit from the National Park Service- and the vast majority of permits go to the commercial outfitters, which charge thousands of bucks for the 15-day trip. The demand for the remaining "private boater" permits is so huge that the park service can charge applicants $25 just to have the chance to enter the lottery in hopes that they MIGHT get a permit that year.

I've never gotten a permit. Until yesterday. (That sound you heard was all my kayaking buddies scrambling for the cellphones to see if I might have space for one more. Of course I do. It's a full permit.)

It's a terrific opportunity, of course. A once-in-a-lifetime deal. And considering the academic work I'm doing on Powell's journals, it's right in line with my studies as well.

But here's the problem: I got the permit in the secondary lottery, which raffles off the slots that others have canceled on. I have to tell the park service by Dec. 10 if I want my launch date-- which entails dropping a deposit of $400. And the launch date is Jan. 14.

The first day of class for the spring semester at LSU.

I've committed to teach World Lit (1650-present) in the spring. (Not exciting to everyone, I know, but I'm pretty psyched about it. My syllabus rocks, if I do say so myself-- devised over a pious beer or two with my buddy Tom, who is teaching a section of the same course for the English department.) So, yes, I could beg someone (most likely Tom) to cover my class for the first two weeks-- after all the first week is just adding and dropping-- and MLK day accounts for one of the classes, so I wouldn't be missing much.

I could do this. Maybe. It would be kind of a rush and a stretch, but I could do it.

Except that the first couple of classes are crucial for setting the tone for the rest of the semester. And if I bail on the first two weeks, it's not a great way to get started. It's not exactly a display of commitment to my current line of work. My track record for making any kind of commitment at all over the past five years or so has not been so hot. I'd like to remedy that when I can.

Except that it's the GRAND CANYON. And just this once. Maybe. My department chair/committee chair (also a bit of an outdoor devotee) said he would understand...

I hate when "outdoor guy Richmond" decides to tangle with "academic guy Richmond." I like both of those guys and want them to get along. (And besides, Academic Richmond is kind of a wuss...)

So I have three days or so to figure this out and get a team together.

That's if I go.

If I don't, back into the lottery I go, to wait for another chance.

And wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Fowl Weirdness

2007-11-27T20:57:00.000-06:00

Driving out to Baton Rouge from New Orleans this afternoon, somewhere west of Gramercy, I watched as a good-sized duck plummeted from the sky, caromed off the windshield of the car in front of me, and smacked into my grill before I could swerve out of its way. I was, you might imagine, horrified.

The whole rest of the way home I imagined its wing jammed inextricably into my bumper, the feathered carcass beating against the chassis. I envisioned putting on the gloves I use for EMT work and getting the worst of it off my car. I saw (in a fit of paranoia, it turned out), people staring in disgust at the carnage clinging to my vehicle. I stopped at the first gas station, but fortunately, the bird must have bounced off my bumper. I found only one feather.

A duck (I mean one BIG motha of a duck!). Falling out of the sky. Had to pick my car to hit.

I mean, that's got to be good luck or something to somebody somewhere, right?

It can't be the sort of omen of the apocalypse I suspect it is, can it?

I still have so much to do in my life!

I can't have nature-spirits flinging waterfowl at my means of conveyance!

Politics, Schmolitics

2007-11-16T17:55:00.000-06:00

That said. I will cast a vote or two tomorrow. There are choices that seem bleedingly obvious to me, which means that they'll probably lose, so I have to go and make my futile gesture anyway. The only two I'm clear on are Caldwell for AG and Clarkson for council. The remainder: meh. (By the way, I have my reasons for the above votes, but I'm not excited enough about them to go into them. I'm terminally bored writing this.)

I should add that I'm not one of those people who think voting is a sacred duty. I also don't buy into that trite truism that "if you don't vote you have no right to complain." That notion is such arrant bullshit in so many ways, my head begins to explode when I begin to write about it. Not voting is a fully legitimate, even honorable action in the face of choices one deems unacceptable. If you think the system is a fraud and a farce, if you think the array of candidates is stunted and semi-witted and dim-eyed from generations of political inbreeding, then by all means stay home. I sort of agree with you. But I'm voting anyway.

If all goes well, tomorrow will go like this: bike ride to polling place-- just in time to beat the flood of golden agers who show up early and in large groups to clog the machinery of democracy. I pay more attention to when I vote-- specifically, dodging those guys-- than I do to which levers I actually pull. Sorry. I also am a devotee of deciding which Mass to attend by how quick the priest is. (And whether the music consists of that dreadful contempo-Catholic crap folkie stuff. Seriously. If they're going to use that rubbish, I'd just as soon they leave out music altogether. Let whatever superannuated pastor drew the short straw drone his way through the sung portions. I stand with Walker Percy's Lancelot on the subject of "guitar-banging and ass-wiggling nuns.")

But I digress. First the voting. Then the cup of iced coffee, whatever the temperature is. (By the way, fellow whodats: 45 degrees F is not cold. It is comfortable.) Yes. Then the iced coffee. Then I go downtown to the New Orleans Athletic Club to participate in a small épée tournament. I will have my butt kicked (as I am the only unrated fencer in the pool so far) by 2ish, at which point I shall return home and get some reading and work done.

Not a bad day, all in all.

Levees, Newmanites and Smartassery

2007-11-14T22:12:00.000-06:00

For a while, the website levees.org ran a video written, directed and acted by a bunch of Newman students. The video poked fun at the Army Corps of Engineers and the American Society of Civil Engineers, which the Corps hired to conduct an investigation into the levees' failure.

The investigation was bit smelly, because the Corps hired the ASCE, and then, as the video notes, paid the organization a million dollars and awarded the principals medals for honorable service. ("Hey, tiger, here. Keep it fair, will you?")

So, as the Times-Pic reports:

The civil engineering group is bristling at a video spoofing its levee investigation recently posted on the Internet site YouTube by the local advocacy group Levees.org. The video implies that ASCE engineers were "in some way bribed or corrupted by the corps," the association contends. They demanded it be taken down.

I wasn't going to write about this video when I first saw it a while back, but this most recent development set me off. Newman students have the reputation of being, well, a bit smug, with an outsize sense of entitlement, and a penchant for smartassery from a very, very privileged vantage point. So being an alumnus can be tricky from time to time (Yes, yes, OK, OK. I went there for K-12, all right? For some reason that Newman holy trinity of Law-Banking-Medicine just didn't take with me. I'll discuss it some other time...)

When a local asks me where I went to school (and here, they always mean "high school" for some reason), sometimes I find myself adopting an apologetic tone-- just to avoid putting up with the hassle and assumptions that occasionally go with that claim. It sucks, because there was a whole heck of a lot I loved about being at Newman, but sometimes it's just not worth the grief trying to defend it.

But this is kind of nice. I'm proud of these guys, and I'm glad to see them turning snarkiness on the right targets. The video is pretty funny, and the ASCE is behaving like a bunch of courtesans accused of being, well, hookers. I guess the video, produced by a bunch of high school kids, really touched a nerve with those adult, professional scientists.

Since the ASCE has turned bully and forced levees.org to take the video down, what the hell: I'll post it here:

I make no claims about its truth or falsehood, but I'm posting it so you can see what it's all about. If YouTube is forced to take it down, you can see it at Greg Peters's blog Suspect Device, which you should be reading anyway. Here's the link: http://www.suspect-device.com/USACE-levees.swf.

The ASCE: unable to locate engineering flaws, incapable of finding a fact (probably couldn't see it behind all the loot...), and totally at a loss when it comes to Constitutionally protected satire. A fine outfit, gentlemen. A damn fine outfit. (Disclaimer: I am no lawyer, but I was reared by one and have dated a couple of 'em, and used to bother them for a living in my former life. That makes me as qualified as the ASCE to make these kinds of judgments.)

By the way: you should check out Dr. Morris's site, for commentary big and small on this issue. He is, as always, very, very good.

Sometimes a King's Kind of OK...

2007-11-13T11:50:00.000-06:00

I'm not a royal watcher. In general I'm not a fan of royals (just another brand of celebrity, officially sanctioned, and based on family and wealth rather than actual ability or talent-- for the most part). But I have sort of a soft spot for the Spanish King Juan Carlos for a variety of reasons.

Sure, some of it is heritage. Thanks to my grandfather I have a weakness and innate affection for things Spanish. Some of it stems from what Juan Carlos did in 1981, when lingering Facist elements in them military tried to stage a coup against the elected Socialist government, and the king scolded them and ordered them back to barracks.

Most recently is this little dust up: he told the tin-pot dictator Hugo Chávez to "shut up," when the Venezuelan called former Spanish President Aznar a fascist and persisted in interrupting the current (Socialist) President Zapatero. The story is here. By the way, the King used "tú" in dressing down Chávez-- very much putting him in his place.

This is not the same as what Prof. Bollinger did to Iran's Ahmedinejad at Columbia, by the way. Bollinger launched, unprovoked, into a denunciation of an invited guest before he even had a chance to speak. This was unspeakably rude. The King, on the other hand, was provoked. Calling the elected president of Spain a Fascist has some serious political repercussions, considering the history of the place from 1936 to 1975. It's not a term one can throw around so carelessly. And Juan Carlos has a greater history of undermining Fascism, one could argue, than does Chávez, despite the latter's endless inflated rhetoric. Chávez behaved like an ill-mannered child, and the king addressed him as one.

Let's get something straight: simply "standing up" to the U.S. doesn't make a leader some kind of moral hero. Chávez is a reprehensible thing, really. A fussy egomaniac of an all too familiar ilk. The reports of improvement in Venezuela all, naturally, come from his government offices, which have proven less than entirely trustworthy. He has antagonized workers, locked up the opposition, and forced the legislature to vote him all but absolute power as chancellor. He has instituted prior restraint on the media, and now dominates them with his own outlets. Bush is worthy of scorn for a long list of reasons, but he isn't in Chávez's ballpark for authoritarian behavior. I wish I understood why some many of us allow ourselves to fall for Chávez's rebel glamor, instead of condemning his ham-fisted application of power.

And before you Chávez supporters start up with the "His motives are good, and he's trying to undo centuries of colonialism/imperialism/racism, so the means can't always be pretty..." I'd like to say that such an argument about suspending standards for means in favor of ends makes me very, very nervous. It's been the stuttered, timorous justification offered by every shameful intellectual who ever apologized for tyranny. We see a version of it from rightists here in the U.S. too: "Sure we're signing away our birthright of freedom, but we're trying to end terrorism and make the world safe for democracy, so the means can't always be pretty..."

That's right. In the words of the immortal Croup and Vandemar these guys seem to think that one can't make an omelet without killing a few people.

2007-10-28T23:25:00.000-05:00

In 1990 I was a freshman at Boston University, and my dorm was not far from Fenway Park. The Red Sox were vying with the Oakland Athletics for the American League Championship. The October nights were clear and the sound carried out of the field, across Kenmore Square, and into the open window of the third floor dormroom I shared with my Savannah born roommate. We had no TV, so we listened to the games on the radio, and we couldn't tear ourselves away as Oakland swept the Sox-- yet another chapter in a long history of futility.

I remember where I was then. I remember where I was during Game Seven in 2003, when EVERYONE knew Pedro was tired, and Grady Little should have yanked him, but he didn't, and Aaron @#$%ing Boone dinged one and the Sox snatched defeat from the jaws of victory yet again. (For the record, I was having dinner with a woman named Tatiana. She liked baseball, fortunately.)

I remember where I was in 2004, when Papi got the team off the mat with its last three outs, and knocked himself and Manny home in Game 4 when it looked like all was lost yet again (in a bar in Baton Rouge). And for that last ground out to win the Championship (on my couch).

This time I was in my apartment, just barely able to catch the last two innings after driving home from a river trip in Tennessee and North Carolina. Just in time to see Papelbon shut another five batters down.

It's good not to worry about curses. And it's great to see this team winning. Finally. And doing it with style. I hope they remain a loose, weird confederation of personalities, never buttoned down and boring and businesslike like our nameless rivals.

And how cool is it that Mike Lowell got the MVP? He's weathered doubt and criticism and played beautifully. Though I really like him for the look of exquisite disdain with which he surveys the field when he comes to the plate to bat. Seriously. Look next time you get a chance.

Ahhhhh happy birthday...

2007-10-26T09:54:00.000-05:00

...to Bootsy Collins.

And on another note: President Bush is a jackass.

I'm thrilled he and Chertoff took the time to get out to California and pose with Schwarzenegger while the state smoldered. I'm thrilled that federal aid is going to California. The loss of one's community, one's home, one's sense of security, is devastating-- as all South Louisianians know.

But to take the opportunity to take a swipe at Gov. Blanco, to rhapsodize about how much of a difference it makes to have someone who's "willing to take the lead" in the state house, is a cheap shot. Cheaper even than I would expect from this guy. What kind of sociopath takes catastrophe as an opportunity to score a tawdry political point off a nice old retired lady like Gov. Blanco? (Who, to her credit, answered him well.) The link to the story is here. This guy can't admit he did an utterly reprehensible, totally divorced from reality job last time. He's doing better now. Why would Bush compound his failure by being a defensive boor about his record?

Jackassery is the only explanation. He's a jerk.

Three more points: First this disaster was not federally made, as our flood was. Also, it's not the result of environmental protection laws (as I heard various rightwing radio whackjobs proclaiming yesterday). Dry tinder, sparks and wind produce fire.

Second: I would never question anyone's decision to live in San Diego, despite fires and earthquakes and other potential disasters. It's a beautiful, beautiful place, with endless opportunities to do exactly the kinds of things I like to do outside. It's risky, sure, but it's home for these people, and a good place to live. They deserve all the help we can give them, and they deserve to rebuild, better than before. They should not be abandoned, and then condemned for "seeking handouts" when they ask for help.

Last: Bush has done what no-one in Louisiana could do: make a prophetic genius out of Ray Nagin: "if this had happened in another part of the country-- California or New York or Miami or something, somewhere like this, most likely it would have been a different response. And that's the hard cold facts around this."

We're seeing the different response.

Just Trying to Keep Up

2007-10-25T19:17:00.000-05:00

I drove out to White today, so I could pick up my canoe. I've been storing it out there since the dodgy outfit that bought my garage apartment decided they want to cram another apartment into the basement. I couldn't keep it in town anymore (I barely have enough space for my other gear in my apartment), so out to the country it went-- to the old barn for a couple of weeks.

(A quick aside: these people who bought my landlords' house are penny-ante corporate scorched-earth gated community suburban barbarians of the worst sort. They've cut down the trees between the main house and mine, and they rhapsodize about the truly horrid things they're planning on doing to my quirky old apartment when I move out. I will be the last person to live here while it is cool. Rant concluded.)

I was picking up my canoe because I plan to sell it at the Nantahala Outdoor Center's festival this weekend. It's a whitewater boat, and I don't get on whitewater enough to make it worthwhile. When I paddle rapids, I want a kayak. So I'm selling it, and I'm going to buy a sea kayak, which will serve me better on the ample flatwater around here. (It's going to be badass, and I will post pictures when I get it...)

It was, you may have noticed, one of those beautiful fall days, duplicated only by similar ones in the spring, that make it seem sheer madness to live anywhere else in the world. As I dawdled through Labadieville, windows down, I smelled the over-sweet bagasse and the smoke from burning fields that sparks the part of my brain that remembers the first cool days every fall.

While I was there, I gathered up a bunch of the satsumas that seemed to be about to pull their trees down with them. One bag to the parents. One bag for me on my trip to share with friends. They're good this year: tart and medium sweet. Here's a picture of one of the trees:

On the way, I had a conversation with a very wise Boston-dwelling friend (well, now she and her husband are suburbanites, too, I guess-- or small town New Englanders anyway). And I heard myself saying that my "change is coming" instincts are going haywire these days. I'm wrapping up the school part of this degree, looking for work, and wondering yet again if I'm going to have to leave this state again to make a living.

Add that to some ominous other news (not about me directly, but disheartening nonetheless, and a recurrence of my periodic desire to give away most of my possessions and light out for the wilderness, and it becomes clear to me that I for one will be very interested to see what happens next. (Bonus points for knowing the movie that line comes from...)

I Don't Wanna Work in a Building Downtown...

2007-09-19T15:52:00.000-05:00

...but my office on LSU's campus smells a little bit like despair. It's musty and closed-off and has a sort of desperate tang to it these days. A smell of stale sweat, unchanged central air filters and books of critical theory now just a little bit past their prime.

Fortunately for me, I don't have to spend very much time there these days. Yes, I'm airily dismissing the fact that I haven't updated since July. I've been busy. Very busy. What with the kayaking and then the traveling home and then the getting back into the whole "Holy Shit, I'm a graduate student" thing.

But my absence isn't all in vain. I have been at work. I have a book list. I have areas of concentration for my general exams in early spring (Emerson, Robinson Jeffers, Ecocriticism (with emphasis on "deep ecology"). I have a sweet teaching schedule (Spanish for advanced beginners, Mon. and Wed. 6-8 p.m.). I even have a rough chapter or two of said dissertation sketched out, and should have another by Christmas.

What's more, I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do when the next nine months are up.

I should try to get an idea soon, because I don't want to go through the next year as LSU's pet bitch, unless they start coughing up more money for me. I can make more cash doing something other than working as an instructor, after all. I have qualifications. Those qualifications include: wilderness guiding and wilderness medicine, emergency medicine, reporting, bullshittery and a varying ability to read and write. If anyone knows of a job coming open in the next year or so that might make use of those qualifications, please let me know.

And such a job can be anywhere. Sadly enough, I'm entertaining all options. I left my job as a reporter to come back to South Louisiana, with the ultimate plan of returning to my home and family in New Orleans. That's still my plan, but I'm not kidding myself. I may have to settle for solid work elsewhere for a time, and work my way home again.

This alternately pisses me off and makes me sad, and I will write more about it now that I'm back in action, but just this moment I don't have time. I'm giving a test in just a bit, and probably should review the material to make sure it all works.

Five things:

1. I recognize these Saints. I was wondering where they had wandered off to last year. Welcome home fellas! It's been at least a year since my last Sunday blood pressure spike.

2. Is there any candidate for governor who isn't a crypto-fascist clown, a marginally capable, pork-barrel-scarfing ass-kisser, or (yet another) dipshit who thinks business and government are exactly the same thing?

3. The Tour de Tangipahoa. a 60 mile bike race through, well, Tangipahoa, was suprisingly pretty. Who knew Louisiana could be so windy and hilly? I was tired when I finished, but I'm sort of jonesing for another...

4. My cousins are back from Iraq. Thank heaven. By the way: though I think we got into the war wrongly, I think we're obligated to fix things now. That doesn't necessarily mean we have to keep all those troops there, but we need to find some way to fix what we've broken.

5. I'm missing Gauley Fest, which is this weekend, yet again. But I may go up to Tennessee and paddle something all the same. I'll settle for the Ocoee and some camping. If you'd like to see some Gauley Fest pictures from years past, check 'em out here.

But this site will have some updates. Oooooh yes. I have a lot to say.

By the way, photos from the summer are available on my Flickr site.

What Summer Looks Like

2007-07-11T22:14:00.000-05:00

I'm in the lodge at the Lakedale Resort in Friday Harbor, where I camp between trips (a really nice place, actually. Really kind people and a comfortable environment. Even if the showers cost $2 for five minutes. Not really enough time to get clean after four days of getting dirty in the backcountry.)

I'm poaching their WiFi long enough to post some pictures from my summer out here and in Yellowstone. I have five more trips to do. That's it. With about 36 hours of turnaround time in between. It will be over before I know it, and I'll be back in the 504. (Except for a brief detour in Jackson Hole to help my friend Emily lead a couple of well-heeled families on a tour of Yellowstone and Grand Teton. I have a truly rough life.)

Here's one from Yellowstone, before I started up my job:

Here's the view from my hammock two nights ago.

Here's a shot of the dawn paddle we did on the 9th.

I'm curiously cut off from all the turmoil in New Orleans, but still connected enough to feel a little pissed off during the very large Fourth of July celebrations here. Hooray for the U.S., which has abandoned us, and its corporations, which are screwing us. I rocked my black Saints hat with the gold fleur de lis in silent protest.

I'm about the luckiest New Orleanian as can be: I spend summers out of it, in a beautiful place; my family is all well and all have places to live and jobs.

I can only imagine what it's like for those whom the country really despises (I don't use hate, because as a nation we don't think of the poor or of minorities enough really to hate them-- with a few exceptions...). Being poor (really poor, not privileged poor, like me), black, female, old-- it could be hopeless.

Two other notes:

First: bring the guy who shot Dinerral to justice. Now. Find him; give him a fair trial with competent representation, and get a conviction. Or we will show the world how we value our young musicians. I can't believe there aren't other competent witnesses to be found. What's the problem with the Jordan and the DA's office? Don't they have investigators? Hell, hire me when I get back. I'm happy to help, and I have a track record of finding witnesses before law enforcement does back from my days as a crime reporter...

Second: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA DAVID VITTER. The smartest guy in the room. The most arrogant, sanctimonious, uncollegial, supercilious jackass of a hack politician to surface in the state for a long time.

A Senator. Lawyer. Harvard graduate. Rhodes Scholar.

He still has to reach for his wallet to get laid.

Just imagine how much of a pointdexter this guy has to be. Hell, even his fellow Rhodes Scholar Pres. Clinton got it for free...

This here is the place where I will be staying:

2007-06-14T09:36:00.000-05:00

There isn’t a number, you can call the pay phone.

(Let it ring a long long long long time…)

c/o General Delivery, Friday Harbor, WA 98250

The Road Trip

2007-06-04T22:41:00.001-05:00

I've been out of circulation for a while, starting with the rather excellent end of the semester for me (a brief aside: all A's again-- back to form-- and the paper I thought was not especially interesting was, in the words of my professor, "absolutely superb". I would post the rest of his comments, but they're really almost too much).

So that's nice.

But better has been the week or so since May 30, when my father and I left New Orleans for the West. I'm coming out here to work, of course, as I do every year. But my father, despite his interest in the area and love for stories form the region, has never visited. We spent two days driving up to Jackson Hole, where we stayed in Teton Village and explored Teton National Park-- in particular Jenny Lake. Then we went to Yellowstone, where we stayed in the Lake Yellowstone Hotel and saw Old Faithful and the geyser basin.

We saw moose and herons and bison and pronghorn antelope and more birds than we could identify. We tried some of the local microbrews and took pictures and stood in awe at some of the places we walked in and drove through.

The hotel at Lake Yellowstone was amazing-- a real old-time throwback of a place, with no TV, no radio and no air conditioning. I think the condition worried my dad a bit-- he likes his chair in the A/C in front of an old movie on TV. But it turned out beautifully. We wandered the lake a bit, then took seats in the sun porch before dinner and watched the swarm of swallows attacking the dusk hatch of bugs while we read and the waitstaff brought us aperitifs. It was very nice. And it's so cool at night that we opened the window and layered on the blankets.

I should mention that travel with my father is really easy and fun: he reads every sign and saved my ass a very long detour more times than I can count. He keeps the ice chest religiously stocked with ice. He ensures we will be able to procure a beer at the end of the day. Most important, he's a source of great conversation and terrific stories on what can become very long drives.

I'm spending another night in Salt Lake City tonight, and it's weird not to have my traveling companion around. I'll post more pictures on my Flickr site when I have a moment.

Tomorrow, back to Jackson.

Now: a few more things. Oprah's interview with Cormac McCarthy airs tomorrow (June 5). I'm not going to see it until I get home for the summer (Thanks for recording it, sis!). I really don't know entirely what to make of this event-- other than that it should be very, very interesting. And I think The Road is fantastic. Like all McCarthy it is dark, dark, dark as hell. But it is brilliant.

I have an article about it on my old newspaper's website.

Next: I'm going to be in and out of contact over the next two months, until I get back, safe and sound, to NOLA. But I have a lot of material out there to be published. The first is an appreciation of Walker Percy in the Chicago magazine Stop Smiling. It is a fantastic magazine to write for, and it is a blast to read. Just ask Jack Shafer at Slate. I may have another story running with them in August, but I'll wait to go into that.

Also: there's a lot of material running on the Daily Report's site: about adventure travel and GPS devices and kayaking and some book reviews when they get to them.

There's other material too, but as I don't have firm dates for them, I'll hold off on announcing them.

All this writing! It's almost as if I were staying home-- except you'll actually have some of my writing to read for a change...

Five Things

2007-05-09T16:28:00.000-05:00

First: I am done with my papers. One is very, very good, if I do say so myself. One is just barely the kind of passable crap I dash off at the last moment to get out of the semester. Not exactly going out in a blaze of glory.

Second: I am really, really tired. And I still have exams to grade.

Third: I am running some chores and cleaning up a little tomorrow. Then Friday, right after lunch, I am taking to the mountains for a week or so. I may teach a kayaking class or two; I'll definitely get on the Ocoee. I might get on Section IV or the Cheoah, which I have never run. I will also get in a few days of backpacking with my new badass pack (I had to upgrade. I've had my same pack for 11 years, and we've been good to each other. It's in good shape, and it's a bomber pack, but it was time to get another big thug pack. And Macpac is soooooo sweet.)

Fourth: I have a review of the new Elliott Smith album up at the Athens Exchange site. It's very fun web magazine based in Athens, Ga., where I used to live, and it's run my friend Len-- who's doing a nice job over there. I miss Athens. I may go there during my week's wandering. (4b: I have a LOT of publications coming out in the next couple of months. I've had a busy semester. I will post a list of where to look for them before I go incommunicado for three. Beautiful. Months.)

By the way, Zappa freaks: I know writing about music is like dancing about architecture, oooookaaaay? So save the witticism.

Five: I cannot WAIT to get outside. I cannot WAIT to get outside. I'm getting crabby and out of shape.

Final Stretch

2007-04-30T10:37:00.000-05:00

Yes, I'm overwhelmed with work. The next week includes finishing up two seminar papers, grading compositions and quizzes, administering and grading my final, handing in a final Arabic project, and taking an Arabic spoken exam. It's a lot of work, and I'm not even counting the freelance work that keeps black beans in my rice.

So I haven't been updating for a week. I've been... working.

Yes, I went to the Jazzfest yesterday. I had to see the Hot8. I'm working on a magazine article about them. I was working. (They played beautifully, by the way, and the crowd was huge and appreciative. I have some words to say about Jazzfest's treatment of local acts, but that's going to have to wait a while...)

Ahem.

There are pictures at my flickr site.

Now back to the other kind of work.

Steady Now

2007-04-20T08:51:00.000-05:00

In June of 2005 I was in the Salt Lake City airport en route to a summer guiding job in Wyoming. Out of some odd impulse, I picked up The New Yorker. It was odd, in that I tend to stay away from The New Yorker. Whenever I have had a subscription, the issues pile up and keep coming until they form a paper testament to everything I will never accomplish in my life-- chief among them, keeping up with the damn New Yorker.

So I stay away from it. In general. Except for that time. That time I found a poem in it by Eamon Grennan. I liked the poem so much I tore out the little corner it ran on, folded it up into quadrants, and jammed it into the handy pocket in the back of the Moleskine notebook I use as journal and wallet.

I carried it around all summer, vaguely aware it was there. Then I found it again one morning in early September 2005, when I was exhausted and sad about what had happenen to my city and to my friends and family and neighbors.

I saw the words differently then. But I still thought it was a good poem. And reading it this morning, I still think it's a very good poem. So here it is.

Steady Now

Although things vanish, are what mark our vanishing,
we still hold on to them-ballast against the updraft
of oblivion-as I hold on to this umbrella in a world of rain,

of heavy wet greens and grays dissolving into a new
atmosphere, a sort of underwater dulled electric glow
off everything, the air itself drowning in it, breath

thickening, growing mold. Yesterday I felt the smell
of grass greeting me as across a great distance, trying
to tell me some good thing in an underglaze of memory,

some forgotten summer trying to speak its piece. It is
the way of things and it never stops, never calls a halt-
this knocking and dismantling, this uprooting, cutting out

and digging down, so tall oaks and honey locusts are
laid low and drop to earth like felled cattle, shaking
the ground we've taken a stand on as if it were a steady

establishment, a rock of ages to outface ruin itself, not
the provisional slippery dissolving dissolute thing it is-
which we have against all evidence set our hearts on.

Detachment

2007-04-19T15:07:00.000-05:00

Let's try something new: I'll post a video. This one is from the late 90s-- Fiona Apple's cover of the Beatles' "Across the Universe." I like Fiona Apple; I like her delivery and phrasing and her sly darkness and her borderline perverse arrangements in her own work. And I think this is a superb cover. (Rufus Wainwright's is also pretty good, but this one I like better.)

This video, in particular, has been on my mind a lot recently. (It was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, of Boogie Nights and Magnolia fame.) There's something enormously appealing about the ataraxia inherent in the lyrics of the song itself. The serene, blissful detachment is very attractive to me. Seductive, even.

I say seductive, because when the world surrounding us is relegated to a position of utter insignificance, when all action is pointless, when we should eschew action for transcendent unity with Plotinus' One or the mind of Brahman, it can become a license to seek one's own serenity rather than getting involved with hopeless, and ultimately pointless, material matters. It can favor asceticism at the expense of risking real contact with others. As worldly matters recently have seemed to be spiraling into utter chaos and madness, the thought of balance and peace seems to offer an attractive way to live.

Or no way to live at all. Unconnected to others? Existing in empyrean bliss above the suffering of people you might have helped? One of the reasons the cover and video are so successful in my mind, is the hint-- maybe more than a hint?-- of irony in Apple's delivery. Lennon's version was, I think earnest, and Apples' rendition is faithful without being slavish. But there's something else there. A glint in the eye, an aural wink in the singer's languid phrasing. It's deadpan even.

And as the argyled thugs around her trash the place, she remains blissfully detached. Somehow, the updated message may not be one of disengagement in search of transcendence...

This is a lot of ontological weight to freight a music video with, I know. It's just something I struggle with-- is all I'm sayin'. And not just since the storms, though they may have strengthened my tendencies.

Jai guru deva...

(And for all you NOLA types: Brahman is NOT synonymous with "dudebrah".)

Have I Mentioned What I'm Doing This Summer?

2007-04-18T14:58:00.000-05:00

Just in case:

Yes, last summer was two months in southwest Costa Rica. The summer before that was two months in Yellowstone and the Spanish Peaks country in Montana. This summer, it's the Pacific Northwest.

I will be guiding sea kayak trips in the San Juans all summer. Granted, it's not the mix of activities I did in Yellowstone and Montana (no backpacking at all this time). And, granted, it's not the tropical rainforest (although I won't have a psycho co-guide either). And it's not guiding on the Colorado all summer, as a former co-guide is doing.

But it's going to be damn amazing. I cannot wait to spend the summer paddling and sleeping out. I come back from my summers energized and reminded that the world is complicated in ways we never notice, and simple in ways we make needlessly complex.

So it's like this: in thee weeks, my semester will be all but over. Then for two weeks or so I dirtbag it in various southeastern whitewater locales. Then I drive out to Wyoming. Then I go to Washington. Then back to Wyoming. Then home.

But first I have some papers to finish.

By the way: photos from my previous summer excursions are online here. Look in the "sets" menu.

War Poet

2007-04-17T07:19:00.000-05:00

I've noted before that I'm not a fan of National XXXX Month. I think that at best it's a way of ghettoizing issues that should be in the back of our minds all year. At worst-- and most commonly-- it's a way of bringing the utterly insignificant to the public eye for 45 seconds of indifference (national be nice to frogs day...)

But I have weakness for April, National Poetry Month, because it's MY insignificant, ghettoized issue. So I won't let it go by entirely unnoticed. I'll post some poetry from time to time when I have a moment (haha!)

This one is by Brian Turner, from his 2005 collection Here, Bullet. Turner was a sergeant with the infantry in Iraq. His poetry is very good. Not explicitly political, as Rupert Owen or Robert Brooke were, but the immediate shock and strike of his work are astonishing:

HERE, BULLET
If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta's opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you've started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel's cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue's explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

I suppose this piece also has some resonance for the slaughter at Virginia Tech yesterday.

I hope everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

2007-04-12T15:14:00.000-05:00

So Kurt Vonnegut died last night.

This bothers me a great deal, and I'm a bit surprised by it.

I knew he was old. I knew the end probably wasn't far away for him. (He was 84, after all.) But I'm still sad about it.

It's hard for a hack to pay homage to a real writer. The words don't come properly. This might be because of the respect someone like me feels for a real master. On most topics I can throw words around, like rice at a wedding. Indiscriminate. I know what I'm not capable of. But I also know enough to stand in awe when I encounter the real item.

Vonnegut wrote the real thing.

He was savagely funny and critical where it counted, but overall gentle and wry and jaunty and filled with pity for us humans-- misguided and silly and self-destructive and brutal as we can be. His satire came from his certainty that individually at least we were better than we were behaving.

I read Cat's Cradle (1963) when I was in eight grade, and it remains my favorite. I then devoured everything else he wrote. Novels, essays, short stories. Everything. His writing influenced the way I see things, and his voice sounds like the gentle one in my head that in my best moments reminds me to be kind to people.

The best interview I ever read with Vonnegut was in a Chicago magazine called Stop Smiling. There are excerpts from it online here. But you should buy the rest of the issue, too. It really is excellent.

It's a shame that he's written his last word.

One of my professors asked me today why I was wearing all the black (this is an undergrad heavy class, an intermediate language class). I said that Kurt Vonnegut was dead. Not one of the students knew who I was talking about.

Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.

Here's a passage from one of his last essays, published in A Man Without A Country (2005):

I am, incidentally, Honorary President of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that totally functionless capacity. We had a memorial service for Isaac a few years back, and I spoke and said at one point, "Isaac is up in heaven now." It was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now." That's my favorite joke.

Goodbye Uncle Kurt.

Rock Stars

2007-04-12T10:00:00.000-05:00

I can only take Pitchfork in small doses. I'm not going to pretend I don't read it. I do. A lot. I'm also not going to pretend that I ignore the reviews. I pay attention to them. I only discount the ones that are way too baroque in their style-- or way too arid or deliberately obscure in their taste. I generally consider them a bunch of comical nerdy music snobs-- who nevertheless know what they're talking about from time to time. They're the internet version of the two clerks from Hornby's High Fidelity.

But today they say something nice about my brother's band, which is enough for me to link to them. The link actually goes to a remix Telefon Tel Aviv did for a German band. The remix screams TTA. Lots of Rhodes, lots of nonrepetitive rhythm. It's very pretty. The link is here.

My brother's a damn good musician and producer. Even if he did temporarily alter his hair to resemble Vanilla Ice circa 1991. (To the Extreme, Brah!) Or maybe it's really Morrissey, circa 1988.

The photo is from a show in Prague back in March. The photographer was good, so here's a link to the rest of them. (Hope they don't mind my borrowing one here...)

Praise for Mechanics

2007-04-12T09:37:00.000-05:00

Remember all that crap that happened to my truck? All the dings and dents and broken stuff? It's all fixed. My truck gleams. It looks amazing.

The guys at Louisiana Auto Repair took a week to do it (labor being what it is in NOLA these days, that's not so bad considering all they had to do), but it turned out beautiful. They came in $50 under the estimate, and even fixed my busted mirror without my asking them to. (I thought I was going to have to go to a dealer for that.)

I've been going to these guys when Newman E. Smith was still working in the shop every day-- since I was in high school. And they've always done great work. They're at 1321 Magazine.

A weird aside: an old friend and her husband own the houses across the street and up the block a bit. She noticed all the kayaking/outdoor trappings on the truck and figured it had to be me. Left a note on a napkin saying-- Do you live in this area now?

That area is the blocked off portion of Magazine that's been all but inaccessible for about three years now. That stretch really needs to get open.

What I Did on my Spring Break, By R. Eustis

2007-04-09T09:04:00.000-05:00

Want to see something cool? Here's me with Herbie Hancock. Hancock is damn cool. That doesn't make me cool at all, but it means I had a moment in which I was able to bask in his reflected coolness. Did I mention that I also got to talk with Terence Blanchard and Wayne Shorter? I almost passed out from the heady air of hipness and skill. I should add that it's a damn sorry state of affairs when a reporter from a New Orleans broadcaster has to ask Herbie Hancock who he is. I saw this.

That picture comes from last Monday's announcement celebration at Loyola that the Thelonious Monk Institute was moving from USC to Loyola New Orleans. It was, to say the least, an inspiring day. The news of the move is good in itself-- a way of reminding the world of the good things this city has given the world. That the Institute is making an enormous "Commitment to New Orleans" is just added beauty. If all goes well it will be a place where musicians come to teach, students come to study with the best, and jazz and the city that gave it birth can give strength to each other. The new class of musicians is excellent, judging from their performance. (As a corollary to this, I'm working on an essay about music here. Not sure where it's going, but this may be part of it. Hence my attendance, which was arranged by one of my oldest and best friends.)

What else? I got to paddle the Ocoee the weekend before that, and had two spectacular runs, even if the day was cold. Lots of goofing off on the water, and a chance to practice with my new badass carbon fiber paddle. I have never had so much power per stroke. I was actually overshooting the spots where I wanted to go. So much fun.

From Wednesday to Sunday, I was in Boston with my friends Adelaide and Mark. Adelaide is the first friend I made (other than my roommate) at BU. They have a new house out in the 'burbs, and it is gorgeous. And huge. And with very slick wood floors that are fun to slide around on. I was reminded of the unpredictable spring in Boston when it snowed on us the minute I arrived. Enough to accumulate. It was as if the city was saying "He's back! Let's get 'im!" A&M, now that they are suburban homeowners, are getting embroiled in small town New England planning politics, and I was privy to a lot of the goings on. Versailles has nothing on suburban Boston.

A&M stuffed me with food, squired me around town, and endured my stream of consciousness babbling all weekend. They were absolutely spectacular hosts, and they reminded me what I missed about Boston. And they deserve a long rest after putting up with me.

I was in Boston, however, not just to inflict myself on old friends. I was there to present a paper to the ACA/PCA national conference. My piece is a weird one, titled: "New Orleans as Memento Mori-- or, Why the Rest of the U.S. is Still a Little Afraid of New Orleans." It's a mix of analysis: Walker Percy, Hurston, McPhee, Benítez-Rojo, Faulkner, Boccaccio; and first person narrative from my journals when I was working as a medic and then wandering around shell-shocked after the storms.

The paper was very, very well received, which always makes me nervous. I aw-shucksed my way through it, for the most part. I'm looking for a place to publish the full version, at the urging of several people-- not all of them from the conference.

But the interesting thing was this: this collection of academics is also pissed off about what happened to our home. They don't feel that they have enough information about what's really going on here. They get the network news pieces about people reunited with their pets, and how dangerous hurricane season is, but know nothing of the ins and outs of the relief money that hasn't arrived, the insurance stranglehold on the city, the crime we can't seem to manage, the dearth of high-paying jobs and local big business. They want this information, but never get it. I pointed many of them to the Times Pic, which has been really good, and to a bunch of the NOLA blogs.

It was fun to wander around Boston when I had a moment. The BU campus looks amazing-- much nicer than it was when I was there. (Though the sort of urban energy and grit is part of what attracted me.) I remembered how it felt to walk in the cold as a undergrad from New Orleans, the sense of possibility all around me. It was what Percy might have called a good rotation.

And on a completely different note: here's a rather evocative shot from my friends Dave & Carolyn's wedding two weeks ago. This is what happens when you try to dress whitewater paddlers up and take 'em out someplace nice. The wedding was a lot of fun, by the way. Very pretty site for the service (a botanical garden outside of Birmingham). And while some of us nursed devastating hangovers, Jim and I managed to get a mountain bike ride in the following day at Oak Mountain. 17 miles on a mountain bike is no joke.

Now you're all caught up.

Unlike me.

I have work to do.

Some Hack Work For You

2007-04-02T14:53:00.000-05:00

... at the website of the newspaper where I used to work when I lived in Atlanta: the Daily Report. It's a legal newspaper with a pretty stellar staff. It routinely kicks ass on complicated important stories in the region, winning awards right and left against much larger competition. Naturally, it has some of the best reporters in town. (I should specify here that I was not exactly one of them. I actually do better work for them now that I'm not on staff. I'm kind of a pain in the ass as an employee, so it sort of makes sense.)

In a general sense, the story's a variation on some themes I've written about in other places. More specifically, it's a response to a question my editor asked me: "Why should people visit New Orleans right now? Is there a reason? Should people visit?"

The story is here.

I know I haven't written here much. I've been a little busy. Will update soon, though. With twice the pithy observations and four times the cool stuff!